#more information in act 3 and maybe a clearer sense of direction in act 3?????

[perpetual-stories]

Story Structures for your Next WIP

hello, hello. this post will be mostly for my notes. this is something I need in to be reminded of for my business, but it can also be very useful and beneficial for you guys as well.

everything in life has structure and storytelling is no different, so let’s dive right in :)

First off let’s just review what a story structure is :

a story is the backbone of the story, the skeleton if you will. It hold the entire story together.

the structure in which you choose your story will effectively determine how you create drama and depending on the structure you choose it should help you align your story and sequence it with the conflict, climax, and resolution.

1. Freytag's Pyramid

this first story structure i will be talking about was named after 19th century German novelist and playwright.

it is a five point structure that is based off classical Greek tragedies such as Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripedes.

Freytag's Pyramid structure consists of:

Introduction: the status quo has been established and an inciting incident occurs.

Rise or rising action: the protagonist will search and try to achieve their goal, heightening the stakes,

Climax: the protagonist can no longer go back, the point of no return if you will.

Return or fall: after the climax of the story, tension builds and the story inevitably heads towards...

Catastrophe: the main character has reached their lowest point and their greatest fears have come into fruition.

this structure is used less and less nowadays in modern storytelling mainly due to readers lack of appetite for tragic narratives.

2. The Hero's Journey

the hero's journey is a very well known and popular form of storytelling.

it is very popular in modern stories such as Star Wars, and movies in the MCU.

although the hero's journey was inspired by Joseph Campbell's concept, a Disney executive Christopher Vogler has created a simplified version:

The Ordinary World: The hero's everyday routine and life is established.

The Call of Adventure: the inciting incident.

Refusal of the Call: the hero / protagonist is hesitant or reluctant to take on the challenges.

Meeting the Mentor: the hero meets someone who will help them and prepare them for the dangers ahead.

Crossing the First Threshold: first steps out of the comfort zone are taken.

Tests, Allie, Enemies: new challenges occur, and maybe new friends or enemies.

Approach to the Inmost Cave: hero approaches goal.

The Ordeal: the hero faces their biggest challenge.

Reward (Seizing the Sword): the hero manages to get ahold of what they were after.

The Road Back: they realize that their goal was not the final hurdle, but may have actually caused a bigger problem than before.

Resurrection: a final challenge, testing them on everything they've learned.

Return with the Elixir: after succeeding they return to their old life.

the hero's journey can be applied to any genre of fiction.

3. Three Act Structure:

this structure splits the story into the 'beginning, middle and end' but with in-depth components for each act.

Act 1: Setup:

exposition: the status quo or the ordinary life is established.

inciting incident: an event sets the whole story into motion.

plot point one: the main character decided to take on the challenge head on and she crosses the threshold and the story is now progressing forward.

Act 2: Confrontation:

rising action: the stakes are clearer and the hero has started to become familiar with the new world and begins to encounter enemies, allies and tests.

midpoint: an event that derails the protagonists mission.

plot point two: the hero is tested and fails, and begins to doubt themselves.

Act 3: Resolution:

pre-climax: the hero must chose between acting or failing.

climax: they fights against the antagonist or danger one last time, but will they succeed?

Denouement: loose ends are tied up and the reader discovers the consequences of the climax, and return to ordinary life.

4. Dan Harmon's Story Circle

it surprised me to know the creator of Rick and Morty had their own variation of Campbell's hero's journey.

the benefit of Harmon's approach is that is focuses on the main character's arc.

it makes sense that he has such a successful structure, after all the show has multiple seasons, five or six seasons? i don't know not a fan of the show.

the character is in their comfort zone: also known as the status quo or ordinary life.

they want something: this is a longing and it can be brought forth by an inciting incident.

the character enters and unfamiliar situation: they must take action and do something new to pursue what they want.

adapt to it: of course there are challenges, there is struggle and begin to succeed.

they get what they want: often a false victory.

a heavy price is paid: a realization of what they wanted isn't what they needed.

back to the good old ways: they return to their familiar situation yet with a new truth.

having changed: was it for the better or worse?

i might actually make a operate post going more in depth about dan harmon's story circle.

5. Fichtean Curve:

the fichtean curve places the main character in a series of obstacles in order to achieve their goal.

this structure encourages writers to write a story packed with tension and mini-crises to keep the reader engaged.

The Rising Action

the story must start with an inciting indecent.

then a series of crisis arise.

there are often four crises.

2. The Climax:

3. Falling Action

this type of story telling structure goes very well with flash-back structured story as well as in theatre.

6. Save the Cat Beat Sheet:

this is another variation of a three act structure created by screenwriter Blake Snyder, and is praised widely by champion storytellers.

Structure for Save the Cat is as follows: (the numbers in the brackets are for the number of pages required, assuming you're writing a 110 page screenplay)

Opening Image [1]: The first shot of the film. If you’re starting a novel, this would be an opening paragraph or scene that sucks readers into the world of your story.

Set-up [1-10]. Establishing the ‘ordinary world’ of your protagonist. What does he want? What is he missing out on?

Theme Stated [5]. During the setup, hint at what your story is really about — the truth that your protagonist will discover by the end.

Catalyst [12]. The inciting incident!

Debate [12-25]. The hero refuses the call to adventure. He tries to avoid the conflict before they are forced into action.

Break into Two [25]. The protagonist makes an active choice and the journey begins in earnest.

B Story [30]. A subplot kicks in. Often romantic in nature, the protagonist’s subplot should serve to highlight the theme.

The Promise of the Premise [30-55]. Often called the ‘fun and games’ stage, this is usually a highly entertaining section where the writer delivers the goods. If you promised an exciting detective story, we’d see the detective in action. If you promised a goofy story of people falling in love, let’s go on some charmingly awkward dates.

Midpoint [55]. A plot twist occurs that ups the stakes and makes the hero’s goal harder to achieve — or makes them focus on a new, more important goal.

Bad Guys Close In [55-75]. The tension ratchets up. The hero’s obstacles become greater, his plan falls apart, and he is on the back foot.

All is Lost [75]. The hero hits rock bottom. He loses everything he’s gained so far, and things are looking bleak. The hero is overpowered by the villain; a mentor dies; our lovebirds have an argument and break up.

Dark Night of the Soul [75-85-ish]. Having just lost everything, the hero shambles around the city in a minor-key musical montage before discovering some “new information” that reveals exactly what he needs to do if he wants to take another crack at success. (This new information is often delivered through the B-Story)

Break into Three [85]. Armed with this new information, our protagonist decides to try once more!

Finale [85-110]. The hero confronts the antagonist or whatever the source of the primary conflict is. The truth that eluded him at the start of the story (established in step three and accentuated by the B Story) is now clear, allowing him to resolve their story.

Final Image [110]. A final moment or scene that crystallizes how the character has changed. It’s a reflection, in some way, of the opening image.

(all information regarding the save the cat beat sheet was copy and pasted directly from reedsy!)

7. Seven Point Story Structure:

this structure encourages writers to start with the at the end, with the resolution, and work their way back to the starting point.

this structure is about dramatic changes from beginning to end

The Hook. Draw readers in by explaining the protagonist’s current situation. Their state of being at the beginning of the novel should be in direct contrast to what it will be at the end of the novel.

Plot Point 1. Whether it’s a person, an idea, an inciting incident, or something else — there should be a "Call to Adventure" of sorts that sets the narrative and character development in motion.

Pinch Point 1. Things can’t be all sunshine and roses for your protagonist. Something should go wrong here that applies pressure to the main character, forcing them to step up and solve the problem.

Midpoint. A “Turning Point” wherein the main character changes from a passive force to an active force in the story. Whatever the narrative’s main conflict is, the protagonist decides to start meeting it head-on.

Pinch Point 2. The second pinch point involves another blow to the protagonist — things go even more awry than they did during the first pinch point. This might involve the passing of a mentor, the failure of a plan, the reveal of a traitor, etc.

Plot Point 2. After the calamity of Pinch Point 2, the protagonist learns that they’ve actually had the key to solving the conflict the whole time.

Resolution. The story’s primary conflict is resolved — and the character goes through the final bit of development necessary to transform them from who they were at the start of the novel.

(all information regarding the seven point story structure was copy and pasted directly from reedsy!)

i decided to fit all of them in one post instead of making it a two part post.

i hope you all enjoy this post and feel free to comment or reblog which structure you use the most, or if you have your own you prefer to use! please share with me!

if you find this useful feel free to reblog on instagram and tag me at perpetualstories

Follow my tumblr and instagram for more writing and grammar tips and more!

[msleviathan]

Skyfall - Kasari Hatake (Kakashi's Daughter)

(Prologue) Scroll 3 - The Mission

Kakashi felt the breeze of the door when Sayuri left quickly and he heard her spriting footsteps down the hallway. He didn't want to be in this situation where he would have to explain himself when he wasn't quite sure what happened. He will tell the Hokage everything he knows. What he's mostly worried about is that he's probably going to receive punishment for killing Rin, even though it wasn't his fault. Deep down he does want that punishment because his guilt is eating at him.

"Kakashi, please explain what happened."

"Well, I was on the battlefield when I noticed Rin was missing. Some people had told me that she was kidnapped by mist shinobis to be a test subject, so I tracked her using my ninken. We eventually found her in a cave under a genjutsu. When we were leaving, she began to act strange and she mentioned having someone or something inside her. Then she asked me to kill her for the safety of the village, but I couldn't do that to her. We were overwhelmed by the number of shinobis and we were quickly surrounded. Rin still persisted that I should kill her, and when I was about to attack one of them she got in front of them and... I killed her with my Chidori." There was a moment of silence right before he continued. "That's when I collapsed and I didn't see anything after that. I remember waking up to a slaughter. Every mist shinobi around me was dead and I didn't know why. There were tree roots and blood all over the place, which weren't there before. I started hyperventilating, and that's when I was knocked out by Sayuri, I'm guessing. Sayuri was taking me back when I woke up... and from there we came back" Kakashi watched the Hokage while he analyzed the information he was given. He would need Sayuri's perspective to make a clearer analysis.

"I see," the Hokage said while he was analyzing. "You mentioned tree roots, right?" Kakashi gave him a simple nod. "Hm."

Kakashi was waiting for the punishment he deserved when the Hokage spoke up again.

"Kakashi, I understand what happened, so I'll let you go rest up before I send you out on another mission."

Kakashi looked up wide-eyed at the Hokage, who was now staring at the paperwork on his desk. He was certain that he was going to get some sort of punishment.

"You may leave now, Kakashi," the Hokage told him. Kakashi turned around and walked out the door, surprised by what just occurred. He slowly walked through the hallways making his way towards the exit. Right when he was going to pass through the door to leave the building, he saw Sayuri ahead of him.

"Hey, Kakashi!" Sayuri waved at him. The boy just ignored her and continued walking away.

'That's strange' she thought but didn't let it bother her. Sayuri made her way towards the Hokage's office. She gave a quick tap on the door and then proceeded to open the door and walk in without a response.

"You called?" Sayuri said closing the door behind her.

"Yes, I've talked to Kakashi already. Now, I need you to clear some things up for me." He told her everything Kakashi relayed to him.

"Okay well that clears some things for me," Sayuri told him.

"And what is that?"

"That confirms my suspicion of Kakashi killing Rin and I think I know exactly why she wanted to die. I just visited the morgue and the lady there told me to check her body for strange chakra and I found tail beast chakra. So I'm guessing Rin knew and wanted Kakashi to kill her because she didn't have control over it. Maybe it was planned for Rin to come back here and destroy the village," Sayuri said beginning to drift off somewhere else in her mind.

"Yes, that would make sense. He also mentioned the tree roots that were there at the scene. I need you to go back there and take a sample of the wood to check if the First Hokage's wood style. It would be dangerous if someone else has gotten their hands on it and that's something we need to know quickly." The Hokage noticed that she was completely lost in thought while biting her lip and crossing her arms. He knew whenever she would do that she's hiding, worried, or thinking about something. Her body language reminds him of her parents. Her father would cross his arms in thought or anger, and her mother would bite her lower lip in worry. "Sayuri?"

"What? Oh yeah, I'll get ready."

"What do you want to tell me, Sayuri?" he told her right when she was going to open the door.

Rin's death brought back great memories of having a friend and she wants to have that again without having the restrictions she once had with Rin. She's been feeling really lonely lately in the Hokage's mansion. Almost like she's imprisoned here.

"I feel like a prisoner," Sayuri with slight frustration in her voice.

"What do you mean?"

"Ever since I was a kid, I was never allowed to do what I wanted. I was never allowed to have friends except for Rin because you and my mother always kept me away from everyone. That just makes me feel trapped in this house. Why did you and my mother keep me away from everyone? Is there something you're hiding about me? Does it have to do with mother's old clan? Does it have to do with the father I've never met?!" Sayuri said, continually rising her enraged voice.

"Sayuri, calm down! It was your mother's choice to keep you away from society. Don't bring your father into this, he died before you were born."

"Who is my father?" Sayuri said with a slight crack in her voice, beginning to feel tears in her eyes. She has asked this question multiple times in the past and always got the same response.

"I can't tell you that. Your mother forbade me from telling you until you're mature enough." The Hokage gave his usual response. This only got her more frustrated.

"Fine, don't tell me! I'll be back soon," Sayuri made her way out the door, mumbling the last part.

The Hokage thought about how much she looks like her father when she's mad. It made him feel nostalgic about the great man.

Sayuri angrily walked down the hallway to her room. When she opened her door fiercely, scaring all her ninneko.

"Oi, what's gotten into you?" Said Naomi, her main ninneko.

"Nothing," Sayuri told her ninneko.

"Obviously, it's not nothing"

"Do you know who's my father?"

"First of all, that's a weird question to ask a cat. Secondly, no I don't."

"Sorry, I was hoping you knew." She was resupplying her pouches, while her ninneko were settling back down. She was thinking about how stupid the question was and began to calm herself down.

"Don't tell me you're going on another mission," said Toshiko, her other ninneko.

"Yeah, I am."

"Didn't you just come back from a mission?" said her largest ninneko, Dai.

"Yes and now I'm going on a quick one, if you guys want to come so you don't have to be stuck here."

"Sure, we'll come along," responded Naomi.

"Ugh, do we have to" Suzume hissed at Naomi, not wanting to go. She's always been a grumpy one but has amazing skills.

"Yes, we've been inactive lately, so we are all going," Naomi told the rest of the seven ninneko and Suzume just sighed and started to get ready.

After getting ready, Sayuri and her eight ninneko left the village and made their way to the spot that Rin died. She explained the mission to her ninneko along the way.

Her ninneko made a ring around Sayuri on their way there. Naomi, a white cat with tan spots and a striped tail, was in the lead. She is a cat with strong leadership skills and the seven others almost always obey her and Sayuri. A large long-haired grey cat named Dai was on the front left. He's the toughest of the group. On the front right, there's a male tuxedo cat named Itsuki, who is brave and fearless. A calico cat named Makoto was on the middle left. He loves working with this group and usually stops arguments. Kazumi, a luxurious female ragdoll cat, who tends to be self-centered, is on the middle right. A male hyper orange tabby cat, named Haruki, is on the back left. The smartest one from the group, Toshiko, was a female siamese cat that was on the back right. The grumpiest of them all, Suzume, is a solid black cat and she was the tail end of the group. Despite their differences, they work well together and their differences are what make them such a great group.

They made it there in about half a day. It was nighttime, but it shouldn't affect anything. There was a problem when they got there, all the blood, bodies, and wood that was there was gone. The blood seemed to be washed away from rain and the bodies could've been taken away, but she couldn't explain the wood being gone.

"Hm, that's strange the wood is gone," Sayuri told her ninneko.

"Welp, let's go back," said Suzume.

"No, all of you spread out around this area and see if you can find strange wood or chakra." With that being said, they all went in different directions. She stayed behind analyzing her surroundings. The damage done on the stone walkway was still there but when she inspected it there was no splinter left behind. She also couldn't feel any strange chakra there.

At that moment she realized the moon turned a bloody red color and all the blood, bodies, and wood returned suddenly right in front of her. She tried to act calm but was internally panicking. She suddenly felt a presence behind her and the blood began to run up her legs and she couldn't move. The presence was so strong that it was overwhelming.

"Who are you?" Sayuri asked the presence.

"Your forefather" Sayuri was surprised and wished to see the man's face, but still couldn't move. She felt a dry hand on her neck then it slightly ran through her hair. "It's a shame you have your father's eyes." That terrified her.

Suddenly she felt the hands on her eyes and her eyes began to burn. Marks began to appear around her eyes, but she couldn't see them she only felt the stinging pain. She started to cry out from the intensity. She began seeing old painful memories of witnessing her mother's death and various other unpleasant memories from her past. But she also saw people that she did not recognize. The one that stood out the most was a silver-colored hair girl crying into her hands, calling out for her father. The more she concentrated on the images being shown to her, the blurrier it would get. An immense sadness swept over her and she felt numb. She couldn't feel the hands anymore and she seemed to be falling into this void.

After a while, she heard her name being called but she couldn't make out whose voice it was. Slowly, her consciousness returned to her. She could now realize that Minato was calling her and was confused as to why he was nowhere near where she was. Her throat hurt, her vision was blurred, and her head had a throbbing pain. Blood began to run down her face from her eyes and nose.

"You're finally awake," Minato told her relieved.

"What are you talking about?"

"Sayuri, you were unconscious for an hour. Some of your ninneko went back to the village and told the Hokage something happened to you and he sent an urgent message to come get you." Minato told her.

"Yeah, you were screaming in pain while holding your eyes and you were telling someone to go away. You seemed to be in a genjutsu, but we couldn't release you from it," Naomi said worriedly.

"I don't remember what happened," Sayuri said holding her head in pain. She tried to stand up, but couldn't keep herself up, and Minato caught her.

"It's okay, let's just go back to the village." Minato saw that Sayuri was losing her consciousness again from the pain. After she was limp in his arms, he teleported them both to the Hokages building. Once there, he walked to the Hokage's office. The Hokage asked what happened and Minato told him everything he knew.

"Take her to the hospital so they can do a check-up on her. After that, return to your mission." Minato gave a nod and left for the hospital. The Hokage was worried that someone targeted her because of who she is, and was now thinking back about the warnings her mother gave him. After a while of thinking, he stood up and began his walk to the hospital.

[sweet-star-cookie]

Ideas for a Rewrite of Pixar’s Onward

So I finally watched Onward, unfortunately not in theatres because of [REDACTED] but what can you do? Gotta be honest, it didn’t wow me. :/ The world seemed flat and boring, and a lot of the tropes and story beats felt really played out and done before, even within other Pixar movies. That said, fantasy themed worlds and the potential creativity therein is a topic that is super close to my heart, and even when the trailer dropped for this movie I wasn’t super impressed with what it had to offer. From the setup of the plot itself, I’ll admit that I was skeptical of it from the outset, perhaps a bit more than usual.

I have my issues with the world building of this film from a visual design standpoint as well, but I’ll save that for another time. For now I want to discuss how I would approach rewriting this film to make it an overall stronger product in terms of story and character development. Obviously there will be spoilers for the actual plot of the movie in addition to my thoughts, so fair warning there.

Okay so when it comes to building a new world for your characters, regardless of its themes or genre, it is important to establish how much of that world pertains to the story you want to tell. As in, are you telling a story about the world itself via your characters, or are you telling a story about the characters with this world as a backdrop? It might seem like a small distinction, but a world’s rules (or lack thereof) can easily divert an audience’s focus within a story. I believe the current version of Onward is an example of the latter, but with a few complications of the former that muddles the direction of the plot a bit. The sense of scope for this film seems to go half-and-half instead, but we’ll get to that later. At the beginning of the movie, we are told about how the world of Onward followed more closely with what we would call a fantasy world; wizards, mythical creatures, knights, a magical staff, the works. But in a pretty rapid-fire scene, we are shown how modern technologies began to usurp the use of magic, thus leading to the modern day fantasy world that is the setting for the rest of the film. Despite how quickly this plays out as a sort of prologue for the movie, I do believe this is a fine set up for a movie like this...

If the movie was about the world.

But as we know, it’s about Ian and Barley’s quest to bring their father back, and almost exclusively focuses on their family. This too is a perfectly good setup, but the movie somehow ends up with both, and it leads to a lot more questions than answers as a result. The prologue setup generates a lot of questions about the world itself, such as the use and discovery of magic, that do have an effect later on in the story, but the implementation of magic itself does not have clearly defined rules about who can use it and why. Modern day law enforcement seems to govern this world, yet any use of magic does not seem to have any bearing on that. Magic clearly still exists in this world, but the audience does not know when or how it appears. Where does magic come from? What is the scarcity of it? Can you get arrested for using magic? Do people who use or own magical items get special treatment? Are magical items more valuable and therefore need to be regulated? How common are they? All creatures in this world appear to be inherently magical, or at least possess abilities from their magic-based ancestors, but seem to have “forgotten” those abilities over time. Both the pixies and the manticore have wings, but it seems that only the pixies need magic to use them. Why? Historical landmarks like the one Barley tries to protect in the film are viewed as passive history, no longer holding much significance. And even the manticore’s map is reduced to a placemat at a children’s restaurant, so the preservation of this history does not appear to be a priority for this society. Moreover, these questions also directly correlate to the main protagonists, namely, why can Ian wield magic and Barley cannot? If Wilden (the dad) could or used to wield magic, could Laurel (the mom) do it too? Are their different kinds of magic? Is there a hierarchy to how powerful one’s magic can be? Ian becomes better at using his father’s staff over time in the film, but how he is able to do so via the staff or Barley’s instruction is pretty unclear. Now, all of these are questions are actually ones that wouldn’t need to be answered necessarily, but only if the film reeled itself in a bit and its scope was a lot clearer. Many other fantasy or alternate world stories have a much smaller scope that doesn’t need to ask these questions of the audience when it doesn’t pertain to the story they’re telling. An excess of world building does not matter if it has no bearing on the current story being told. A good example is in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, where the establishment of toons existing in the real world is the entire crux of the story, but how toons became a part of the real world is not explained, and doesn’t need to be for the direction of the plot and characters. You are introduced to the world with only the information you need, and you are taken through the story with that specific set of information. The progression of the plot does not rely on answering the question of why toons exist in this world, so it does not address it. Onward could have achieved this too, if the film didn’t explicitly ask these unanswered questions within its own plot. If the film focused solely on the Lightfoot family without the prologue, all of these questions about the world wouldn’t need to be answered. This is not a “magic was usurped by technology” story. This is a “how do I get my Dad back?” story. Which honestly begs the question:

Why does this have a fantasy setting?

With how much this film goes half-and-half on the relevance of the world to its characters, the more it seems like a coat of fantasy paint slapped on top of a story that could be told with real humans, or any other kind of creature for that matter. The fact that these characters are elves, pixies, trolls, etc. is inconsequential to the storytelling. Magic aside, if you replaced all of the fantasy races and locations with real-life equivalents, what would change about the story or its progression? In fact, if you removed the idea of magic entirely and replaced it with a series of non-magical challenges that Ian faces on his quest, you would have the same movie, just without the fantasy filter. All of the locations in the movie are not inherently fantastical, the school, the gas station, the tavern, even the vehicles and animals in the film, all have really obvious real-world equivalents, which diminishes the fantasy theme even further. Nothing separates them from these parallels. Even the main magic system is an equivalent to DnD and other tabletop roleplaying games in this world, and isn’t viewed as anything more despite becoming a prominent source of power for the protagonists. Again, having the world take a backseat to the characters is not inherently a bad thing, but if you’re going to take the time to establish how this world began and changed over time, then that has to be relevant to the story at hand in some way, otherwise you’re just establishing something that ultimately doesn’t go anywhere. So how would I fix this? Well, at this point I feel like you’d have to pick one of the two halves that this story tries to weave together: either open up the world and the relevance of magic within it, or focus exclusively on the Lightfoot family and their relationships. If it were me, I’d pick the latter, because to me the best parts of the film were the parts that focused on the family, especially the relationship between Ian and Barley. The world of Onward really isn’t that interesting as it stands, so putting more focus on that without a complete overhaul probably isn’t a good idea.

To start, I would keep the part about Ian wanting to learn more about his Dad, as well as Barley’s memories and misgivings about not saying goodbye to him. This, like most Pixar movies, is the strongest part and serves as the emotional core of the film. Both of them have their individual reasons for wanting to see their father again, and those motivations can move and change over the course of the narrative. But, have Ian tie his own identity to finding his father, as if his father is the one person who can tell him who he needs to be. A missing piece of him that only his father can fill, and this desire becomes more and more desperate as the film progresses and they run closer to that 24 hour time frame. Those earlier scenes about others who knew and admired his father could help corroborate these feelings, where Ian wishes to carry on the legacy of his father. Perhaps Barley could have similar feelings, as if being called a “screw up” throughout his life made him question the legacy of his father and his relationship with him. A “I don’t know who I am + believe in yourself” message has been done to death, but the execution could still make the ending of this film that much stronger. When the climax happens and Ian is unable to see his father before the sunset, THAT is when you want him to have the Act 3 Pixar realization about the overall message of the film, and how he had a father figure through Barley the whole time. Maybe there’s a point where Barley is hanging onto Ian in the rubble and time is running out, and he tells Barley to go see their father while he still has the chance. Have the internal realization be that Ian doesn’t need to see his father to know who he is anymore, as the journey he went on throughout the movie already gave him that answer, thus allowing him to let go and let Barley get his closure instead. Some of these points do exist in the current version of the film, but I feel that this slight reframe could strengthen it enough so that it is a common theme throughout the movie.

The subplot with the mother and Officer Colt is a strange one, further complicated by the inclusion of Corey the manticore as a secondary character, but I think it could have rounded out the story even more with a bit of work. If there really needed to be a stepparent role for this movie, I feel like Corey could have filled that role while also providing the map for Ian and Barley’s quest (I know getting a Disney Gay is like pulling teeth at this point but hear me out). There is a fairly decent amount of time spent in the movie regarding Laurel’s role in protecting her sons, especially when she recruits Corey into finding them. And with the scene at the tavern, Corey already has a decent idea of what the boys are like, which could make for good chances to bond with Laurel. There’s a good line in the movie that I feel really goes under-utilized, where Corey describes the boys’s assertiveness at the tavern. Laurel assumes she’s talking about Barley, but she’s really talking about Ian, and this surprises her. This is a really good way of showing that another’s perception of one’s character is not the whole picture. With the climax reframed to better focus on Ian’s sense of identity, this could have been an excellent line as a lead up to that climax, and for thematic coherence overall. Ian struggles with his identity while relying on others to make it for him, and that extends to his own mother’s perception of him, which changes as the story progresses. Despite that, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of conflict between Laurel and her sons, even when discussing their late father. They’re sad, yes, but ultimately they’re dealing with it okay. They love each other, and despite their differences they have a good sense of solidarity. There doesn’t have to be conflict in that way in every story like this, but her quest to rescue them could have been a good way to bridge that, bringing in a one-two punch of parental resolution at the end. 

With this you could cut Officer Colt’s character entirely, in fact I don’t know why both him and Corey are in the film when they seem to fight for the same purpose in the story. His inclusion doesn’t seem to create a rift in any of their relationships outside of mild disdain when he’s first introduced. I genuinely did not know that Colt was officially in the Lightfoot family until the word “stepdad” was used over halfway through the movie. Otherwise I just assumed he was someone who was involved with the family via arresting Barley and had at least a mild romantic interest in his mother. And given the relevance of Wilden and the strength of their prior relationship, that doesn’t paint him in a very positive light at the start. But if you really wanted to keep him, there needed to be a scene that truly solidified that he cared for Ian and Barley. There is very little to suggest what kind of relationship the brothers have with him, other than Colt’s disapproval of Barley’s delinquency, but by the end of the film they’re suddenly on good terms, as if some resolution was made. He doesn’t seem to do much more other than pursue them like a cop would a criminal, and even when Laurel is worried for them, his search still seems to be nothing more than a part of his job, like it was at the start. 

Perhaps he could save them from something while they’re on the quest, like when Barley sacrifices his van to make the rocks fall. Maybe it goes wrong and the rocks falling still puts the brothers in danger, forcing Colt to abandon the other officers to save them. The brothers may be surprised at this, but it would have come from a genuine desire to protect them on Colt’s part. If you really wanted to establish even a bit of a connection with the brothers, he could’ve accompanied them on part of the quest, doing things that only he could do to help them, and perhaps having a chance to hash out their relationship with him along the way. I realize that Colt having difficulties connecting with the brothers is a common stepdad trope, but if he was to have any relevance at all, he needed a reason to be there. Ironically, Corey ends up having more interactions with the boys at the tavern than Colt does for the entire film. Overall I feel like there was a lot of missed potential with Onward, and while the emotional core was there like it always is in Pixar movies, I feel like it got skewed a bit along the way, thus diminishing the final emotional punch at the end. There are some genuinely great parts of this movie, especially Ian’s final character resolution with Barley, but the whole is not greater than the sum of those parts, and that saddens me greatly. I’m not sure how much of this was Disney mandated versus Pixar implemented, but I hope they can get their groove back eventually.

[yeaaabudddy]

A Little Crossover (1/4)

Ship: Peter Parker x Batsis!Reader (Y/N)

Characters: Peter Parker (Spider-Man), Reader (S/H/N), Bruce Wayne (Batman), Dick Grayson (Nightwing), Jason Todd (Red Hood), Tim Drake (Red Robin), and Damian Wayne (Robin)

Type: Fluff

Requested: Yes, by @wolfiemichele and @comicsgirlimagines (her request was a bit long so I didn’t show it but I will definitely write it all up!)

Words: 2 220

Notes: This took a long time to write that’s why I wasn’t able to post for a few days, I’m currently still writing more for this so if you want more parts please let me know! Thank you for the request, it was fun to write! Also (h/c) = hair colour.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

-

You walked around on top of buildings of the southern regions of Gotham, trying to see if there’s any crime on the street that might need your attention.

As you land on a closed burger joint, you noticed harsh whispering that invaded your sense. You turned to see the alley on the side of the building, noticing 3 bulky men and a terrified woman in the middle.

Your blood boiled at the thought of these men abusing their power over someone who wasn’t able to fight back. Her hands were held back by 2 of the men and the other guy was threatening her with physical and verbal violence.

You drop down lightly into the alley. Your footsteps light and your costume bleeding into the night, concealing you.

The man in front of the woman reached out for her bag and that’s when you knew it was your time to act.

You appeared behind him, kicking the back of his knee. He kneeled in response to his weakening and went to turn around but you knocked him out with your grappling hook. The two guys holding down the girl look at you in surprise.

Their leader was taken care of very quickly but they still had confidence as it was 2 against one. The guy on her right let goes of her arm to quickly get a punch in and the other bulky man reaches into his pocket and grabs a gun out.

You easily deflect the punch and see the scene in front of you. The girl was captive and being threatened with a gun.

If it was just you, you would’ve easily been able to deflect it but another person here was getting their life threatened which made you a bit nervous. You had to fight the current goon on your ass as he was continuously trying to attack you.

You dodged all the attacks about to go punch him as hard as you can before you hear a weird squirting noise that you couldn’t pinpoint.

Suddenly a web-like thing attaches itself to the man you were about to attack, constricting him and allowing you to get a clear hit in, kicking him out as well. You look around to see where it came from and you saw a man dressed in red and blue spandex jumping down and appearing before you.

You don’t dwell on the figure, hoping that he’s not a bad guy and put your focus on the woman who still had a gun held to her head.

“Don’t come close or I’ll shoot!” The man yelled, his hand shaking in fear as he noticed your gaze.

You put your hands up to show you weren’t a danger (at the moment).

“Just let her go and I won’t hurt you.” You negotiated -obviously lying but he didn't need to know that. Before you could get another word in you saw his hand clench the trigger, about to go through the motion of shooting but then you heard the familiar squirting sound.

“I got it!” The muffled voice of the boy in spandex yelled.

A thread suddenly attached itself onto the gun in between the two, pulling it to face you two instead. The boy pulls it towards him, trying to loosen the grip of the man’s hand on the gun.

Before you can fully detach the gun from him, he manages to get in a shot. You immediately act by jumping to the woman who had moved to your side unconsciously when she was freed. She was standing in shock at the alley wall and you pushed her from any incoming injuries.

The bullet missed the target, landing a few feet away from the position where she was standing. You looked angrily at the man seeing that the boy had constricted him onto the wall, the gun on the ground and his mouth struggling against the same thread.

“That was reckless!” You shouted at the boy dressed up in the obnoxiously bright colours.

“B- but I just-” He looked at you in confusion. The man was about to shoot and he stopped him from getting a direct hit.

“Sure, I was a damsel, I was in distress but I had it under control and didn’t need your help. I have learned many techniques on how to save a hostage and done this many times. I had a plan.”

The red and blue boy’s posture went defensive as his hand went to rub his neck and looking away from you. He wasn’t sure how to respond as he’s never really been in this situation. You made him pretty intimidated by your dominating personality in the field.

“But…” You paused your glaring, catching his attention again. ”Thank you for the help.” You turned your attention to the woman who looked at the man who held her in captive in awe. The white thread holding a lot of interest.

“You okay to wait for the police to come and give them a statement?” You asked her, making sure that she was mentally okay before you hand her to the police.

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little taken aback. Thank you.” She looked at you before looking in between you and the boy spider. “Thank you both.”

You smiled at her in response, hearing the muted noise of police sirens becoming clearer. “It’s no problem but we gotta go.” You informed her before grappling up to the building and making your way across a few roofs away, hearing the hero following you.

You turned around after the fourth building -a pizza place, you noted. You came eye to eye with the other hero that was present before you.

“Are you…” Your eyes look over his costume before making an assumption. “Spider...man?”

The ‘eyes’ on his costume widen in size making you think that his eyes actually widened.

“Y-yeah! You heard of me?” His voice became higher than before making you question how old he actually was.

“Saw some videos but what are you doing in Gotham?” The videos you saw of him in crappy costumes catching buses and climbing buildings but they were all taken with the location stamp of Queens, a neighbouring city.

“Oh, uh. I was actually just patrolling around the city and I think I accidentally entered your city when I got caught up in my thoughts. Guess I webslinged here and then I saw you and the girl and thought I’d help out.” He explained his side nervously. He hoped you wouldn’t think he was lying or making it up.

“Well, I guess Gotham does need all the help it can get.” Peter laughed knowing that Gotham’s crime rate was pretty high even if it had the whole bat-family helping out to lessen it. Crime just didn’t want to leave its newfound home in Gotham.

“I would always love to help out. That’s why I chose this life.” He relayed his thoughts, he would definitely come back to help you if you ever needed it. Not that he didn't think you could take care of yourself but all the horror stories he’s heard made him fear the city a bit. If you needed another hero, he would come. “If you ever need help, I don’t mind.”

You smirked at his unsuspecting form. He was such a boy but you thought it was cute.

“Are you asking for my number?”

“Uh-” He was surprised at the forwardness of your statement but he realized what he might’ve implied. He blushed and thanked the mask for concealing it.

“Well?” You asked with the smirk still prominent on your face, making him nervous.

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind… getting your number.” You laughed at his shyness, you thought that because of his bright outfit in the middle of the night that he would be a more confident person -and usually, he was (but with you there was something that made him naturally nervous).

“I have to know how old you are first… and maybe your name?” You reach inside your pocket to take out your phone. Waiting for his response before handing it to him.

“I’m 15 and, well, secret Identities and all…” He was conflicted on whether to tell you or not. He’s been told not to trust easily by Tony, especially not by cute girls. You ticked off all the reasons why he should distrust you but he doesn’t think he could.

Plus you were a part of the whole bat-family which meant you had to be trustable because you knew who Batman was! No one just knows who Batman is.

“Very guarded.” You noted and he looked in embarrassment. “I respect that.” You still hand him your phone, realizing that he was probably new to the whole hero gig.

“You still gotta enter something as your name though and I could easily search up your number to get your name.” You point out as he types out his digits into a new contact. He freezes at your statement when he notices his mistake.

“I’m an idiot.” Not knowing whether to fill out his full number anymore, his covered hands stop typing at the screen.

“Don’t worry spidey, I won’t search it unless you give me a reason to.” You smile at the flustered hero, prodding him to finish adding his number in.

He doesn’t know why he did it because he realized that you could probably find out about him using his number as you were trained by a detective but he trusted you because he’s heard a lot of stories about you and your ‘family’.

He handed your phone back and you pocket it, exchanging it for your grappling hook instead.

“Alright spidey, I gotta go report back but It was nice seeing you around and hopefully you can ‘accidentally’ end up here again.” You winked at him. You were about to shoot off into the night but before you make it to the edge of the building where you would take your leave, you turn around.

“By the way, I’m also 15 and my name is Y/N.” You grappled off, jumping off the next few buildings with speed. You were supposed to meet everyone back at the cave for a report and they were probably questioning why you were late.

You hated being late and so you rush faster to not cause any further worry. The other guys always worried about you as you were just 15, they really did care for you as a sister and you loved them. They could be so annoying but sometimes it felt like that’s what normal is supposed to feel like.

Once you arrived at your destination, hurrying inside the cave to see the other heroes still dressed up and reporting on their night. You noticed that Dick was back from his few days long covert mission.

They turn to you upon hearing your entrance. Questioning gazes on their faces but you stand at the empty spot left for you to report on what happened tonight.

After Nightwing’s mission report, Batman turned his attention to you.

“Why were you late?” His question was to the point, as expected.

“I just got caught up in some hero drama, some hero in Queens accidentally crossed onto Gotham, showed him the way back.” You half-lied because you don’t really wanna tell Batman that the guy had helped with some crime around here as he would go full detective mode on who it is.

You also know to expect him finding out about what actually happened in his own ways but you decided to give the poor guy a few days before he gets thoroughly investigated by the big bat himself.

“Who was it?” He demanded to know, his voice authoritative, making anyone else afraid and complicit but you’ll try to keep Spider-Man off of Bruce’s radar as much as you can although he no doubt has a file on him already.

“Doesn’t matter, he left.” You brush off the question, trying your best to avoid his gaze.

“He?” Jason spoke up from beside you, interested now that you mentioned a boy. You rolled your eyes at the prodding. You look at him betrayed, hoping he would’ve taken your side especially since it’s against Bruce’s.

“Oh my gosh, just a mistake no need to make it a big deal. I showed him the way out.” You regret not making up a story but you didn’t want to deal with the repercussions of completely lying about a situation, knowing how much lying could affect everything. Also, Bruce would be really mad and you didn’t want to deal with that.

“You know the rules.” Damnit. You knew Bruce was serious and as much as you wanted to brush this off you were gonna end up telling him whether you liked it or not.

“Okay, It was Spider-Man. Happy?” Bruce had no response but you knew what he was going to do with that information.

“Everyone is dismissed.” You all turn to leave the cave to change and go to sleep. Your head was already aching from discussing the night and the new number on your phone felt heavy in your pocket. You’re glad you got to keep one secret from Bruce.

“So this Spider guy huh?”

“Oh shut up Dick.”

-

This is just the beginning, wanted to see how you guys would like it and I will post more!

[saruma-aki]

Well, I would like to say I thought this through before dragging this post back up after having posted it way back when ST2 was new and fresh out of the proverbial womb, but, the harsh truth is, I did not. Honestly, I have been ignoring the existence of this post since its conception because the amount of popularity it garnered was mainly negative (no shock there; this is, after all, tumblr) and I had more important things to stress over than what someone interpreted from a line in a show that will fade into obscurity in a couple of years. However, the most recent reblog caught my eye because someone actually wrote something under it—and not just under someone else’s words, but the original post, which I had not seen in a while.

Obviously, what they said did not make me very happy. Otherwise, what is the actual point of making this post?

Here is the thing, the “tea” or however you want to call it—everything they said is way out of line.

I will be the first, the very first (no one is beating me to that spot) to admit that the original post was just a little bit tone deaf. It did not really discuss the topic or why it is that I felt like I did or Dacre’s own opinion. It was just a couple of screenshots from an article that made me feel better about where I stood on the whole debate—and I wanted to share it. I don’t know why. Maybe to just not feel crazy in the midst of that drama? Who can say? However, I will be the first to say that the post is wholly inadequate in explaining anything of note.

I was not exactly surprised when people took to it with raised hackles, even if I really never conceived it would reach close to five hundred notes by the time I got the guts to address it again (and I know that five hundred, 5-0-0, doesn’t really seem like a lot, but considering that I thought maybe one person would pay attention to it, it’s basically the equivalent of a million in my eyes).

But, you know what? I’m tired. I’m stressed. I’m slowly dying. Let’s finally addres this. Because this reblog, this most recent reblog, really bothered me. And I know, trust me when I say I know, that it seems simple and of no need for concern, and I’m sure the few people who are actually bothering to read through this are thinking, “Why on earth did they not just talk to this person instead of making a long post?” But, here’s the thing with this whole shebang: I’m tired, and this person isn’t alone in their opinion. What made this one stand out is how they phrased their belief.

I’ve had to listen to people gripe about how this post “proves there’s no such thing as POC solidarity”, and they’re absolutely right because Native American woman are being slaughtered and raped and abused every day, and Native Americans are represented less that one percent of the time (<1%) ) in film and media (and the few, very rare, times they are it is with an abundance of racism and stereotypes piled onto them), and yet I don’t see black people, with their sixteen percent (16%) representation score raising much of a fuss. (This is not a call out or something. I get it. Get your own representation and rights before helping out anyone else. It makes sense, in a way—I’m not judging. But maybe don’t come at people with that when you’re part of the issue.) I have had to listen to people assume my race, ethnicity, political leaning because of this post, and, honestly, I’m just a wee bit tired of it.

I have four things I really want to say with this post, in response to everyone, but especially in response to this one reblog:

1) I am a proud person of color. I am a proud descendant of African slaves. I am a proud descendant of Taino natives. I am a proud member of the Latino community. I am a proud non-white individual who experiences racism on a daily basis.

I experience racism meant for black people. I experience racism meant for Latinos. I experience xenophobia meant for Middle Easterners and Asians. I experience racism meant for Middle Easterners. I experience racism meant for Indians. I experience Islamophobia meant for Muslims. I have been told they should “build a wall” to keep me out. I have been told that the KKK should pay me a visit. I have been called a terrorist. I have had people dance in crude imitations of Indian traditional dance to my face while laughing. I have experienced all of this and more.

I have been a victim of racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc., from both POCs and white people, straight and gays, natives and immigrants.

Do not presume to know my race and my experiences just because my opinion does not coincide with yours. Quite frankly, don’t do that to anyone. You do not know anyone’s life story, especially over the Internet. Do not assume otherwise. Do not delude yourself into a false confidence and assurance of your own moral superiority when you know nothing of the people you are attacking. It is easy to hide behind a screen, and I am not here to tell you to not talk about what you wish and what you can and cannot talk about and direct at people. I merely suggest you stick to the information readily accessible, not mere assumptions based on your own prejudices. It reveals more about you than the person you are belittling.

2) Billy never saw Max and Dustin together like he did Max and Lucas. Billy never saw Dustin upsetting Max like he did Lucas. Billy never sees Max and Dustin in any capacity like he does Max and Lucas.

This is not a justification. This is not an excuse. This is a mere statement of fact. Whether or not you believe Billy is racist or abusive or whatever, the bottom line is the same. Billy doesn’t witness Max with Dustin like he does Lucas. Honestly, I’m fairly certain Billy never even sees Dustin and Max together at all. Think Billy is racist or don’t, but it doesn’t change this very basic fact. It’s not a situation of “why didn’t he” when every iteration can be debunked by simply understanding that this wasn’t information he was privy to ever. “Why didn’t he?” Because he didn’t know.

3) I don’t take the word of the Duffers on anything. Let’s make that perfectly clear. And this is not some personal dislike or something. This is born from experience. I have sat in the writer’s chair; I have sat in the director’s chair; I have sat in the actor’s chair. You know what I have learned? The writer provides the skeleton, the director gives it movement, the actor gives it life. The job of an actor is solely to understand the character. That, ladies and gentlemen and the general populace, is the secret of acting.

What the writers provide is just the guidelines for the actor. The understanding the actor develops can evolve into a different interpretation than the writer or director had, and it has the potential to be more profound.

The other two reasons I don’t take the word of the Duffers on this is: A) had it not been for Dacre, the Duffers would have been subject to critique on lazy writing moreso than they are already because Billy’s depth and complexity, especially the jarring scene we all remember, came from Dacre—Dacre wanted a villain with a reason if he was going to play Billy and he pushed for it (which says a lot about him and how skilled of an actor he is—understanding that experience and trauma shapes us and forms us into what we are and that we are not static beings, so there should be no such thing as a static character) and that makes Dacre’s opinion a lot heftier than the Duffers’ already——B) Dacre originally did think Billy was racist. Isn’t that a kicker? Dacre remarks in interviews that when he read the script at first, he thought, “Oh, no, gosh, he’s racist on top of all of this?” And he stayed with that mentality for a bit. It was only as he delved deeper into the character and understood Billy more as a person instead of the two dimensional villain he’s set up as that he changed his mind and came to the conclusion that he doesn’t think Billy’s racist.

He put in the work.

The Duffers went in with a throwaway line and labeled the character as racist. They wanted a human villain, someone for people to hate, someone to pit against our heroes, against Steve. They wanted to make him awful and static and to have him do what Steve’s character couldn’t and stay the asshole the audience could hate.

Dacre didn’t fall prey to that mentality. He searched for the human in the label “human villain” that the Duffers wanted and found a much more complex character than the Duffers even considered. Because of this, Dacre’s opinion carries far more weight than the Duffer Brothers’.

And, ultimately, most importantly—the main reason I wanted to make this post, to defend the original post this is born from even though I’ve stated my stance on this issue in a separate post in much clearer terms—the real reason I made the original post to begin with even if I never talked about it:

4) People who immediately assume racism instead of ignorance, racist instead of ignorant, are part of the problem, not the solution.

This really bears no explanation. You cannot change what you believe is irreversible. You cannot educate what you believe is closed off. You cannot help that which you’ve condemned.

I do my utmost to live my life by this. Ignorance before condemnation, always, always, always. The majority of the time it is a lack of education on the subject and a lack of personal experience that leads to such grave misunderstandings. Give a person the chance to learn and to be taught and to redeem themselves, and most of them will. It takes time and patience and a boatload of energy and perseverance, but you get there through understanding and the willingness to help out—by giving them the chance everyone else is denying them.

You cannot help those which you’ve condemned. In life and in fiction, until proven repeatedly over and over again when intervention is applied, I like to adopt the philosophy that people are ignorant before they are racist, before they are a sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc., etc.

I’m not saying it’s a popular philosophy (because it’s not), and I’m not saying it’s right (because maybe it isn’t), but it’s my philosophy. And knowing where Billy comes from, what he’s been through, who his father is, what his home life is like, I elect to believe in my philosophy and in my understanding of the human mind, and I don’t think he’s racist. I can definitely see how he might be construed as such, and I don’t belittle those who see it that way, but I stand by my original observation (however ineloquently stated) that I, in my own personal opinion, don’t believe Billy is racist.

And, ultimately, I just want people to accept that. I’m not denying the possibility. I’m not uninformed. I’m not some white, cisgender, hesterosexual man sitting behind his computer screen agreeing with a white actor because it makes me feel more comfortable in myself and my own experiences. I am a proud POC, a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, a writer, an actor, a director, and a human being. I see where you all are coming from—I hear you; I read what you write. I get it. But can you get me? Can you understand where I am coming from? Can you stop with the misinformation and the moral superiority complex? Life is too short to live like this. I know that it’s Tumblr. I know being superior is the bread and butter of this site. But, honestly, guys, let me get cheesy for a second, let me get real, because you guys clearly need to hear this:

Be willing to understand and to learn. You will get so much further in life. You cannot help that which you’ve condemned, guys. And you really can’t. You can’t change what you believe is irreversible. You can’t teach that which you believe is unwilling to learn. Give people a chance, and they might just surprise you.

Gosh, I hope this cleared some things. I doubt many of you made it to the end if you even got past the beginning, but I sure feel better after writing this. Take care. Bless. I’ll see you on the other side of the war.

[savingoursanity]

Hi. I was wondering, is it possible to not have a coping mechanism? 🤔 I had to go to therapy because I felt too stressed and anxious all the time (unfortunetly I had to quit it) and the psychiatrist told me to find coping mechanisms for myself. I also told her that I don't seem to be really good at un-stressing myself, although she seemed like I will find it for sure.... Well I didn't. It's been about 6 months and no matter what I do I never let go of that stress, nor do I relax. I mean I can't relax when I have that tiny "episode" of being stressed, bc ofc it's not like I actually never relax.

Do you maybe know why I can't find any healthy coping mechanism? Only distraction works for me, like watching movies, social media, but the psychiatrist told me it's not so healthy to depend on distraction. I really tried, I was meditating, going on long walks, exercising, writing a journal-at some point even poetry, cleaning, changing my diet, drawing, sleeping, riding my bike, cooking, to be honest I don't think there are things I didn't try to do. And it's annoying because even if I do cardio for an hour I still think about that one thing which stressed me out or I get distracted while writing/drawing and circle back to being anxious. Even if sometimes I actually get a little bit relieved, it never really works for a long time.

I hope you don't get too worked up with these asks because it seems like you get them pretty often haha. You have a really kind heart. ❤️

Once again thank you so much for trusting me with this ask! I have loved getting these so much they have been a bright point in my life during these bleak times.

Although I will be completely honest this ask has been sitting in my drafts for months (I'm so sorry). I'm not going to try and find any excuse for myself so lets just right into things.

I've been toying around with how best to answer this ask because there are so many ways I could go about it. I could go on and on about coping mechanisms as a concept as well as other related concepts because I'm such a nerd about this stuff. However I know for a fact that would wind up becoming a very long and dense post (worse than what this one currently is *cough cough*) and I want to avoid overwhelming you with more technical information.

So I'm going to try and answer this as clearly and directly as possible. There were certain parts of what you've said that stuck out to me that I'd like to explore a bit more.

To begin with, I think we have a collective misunderstanding of what it means to relax and let go of stress. People will experience stress and anxiety in many ways and because of that there's equally as many if not more ways of coping and dealing with it.

Stress can express itself in three main ways: through thoughts, emotions and physical sensations (i.e. fatigue, tension, pain, intestinal discomfort, etc.). The way you experience stress and anxiety may very well involve all three to a certain degree. This is why it's important to learn to know yourself to be able to understand how you specifically experience anxiety at baseline or how you react to stressful situations. It's by getting to know yourself better that you'll be able to next be able to explore just how to find coping strategies that are more appropriate for you. Which brings me to my next point.

You've mentioned that distraction is what you have found to work. Distractions can take many forms, and I get the feeling that's why you may have hit a roadblock. You see, the types of things you've tried can still act as distractions depending on how you do them or use them.

Now we give a lot of flack to distraction because often it's another term for avoidance or repression. But sometimes we really do need to take a step back and remove ourselves long enough to come back and deal with the issue with a clearer more collected mind. For more physical and sensory aspects of anxiety, the activities you've mentioned can help to reduce the stress activation in the brain to a level that is more tolerable. Our mistake is that we use these distractions and stop there, which is why they appear to not work very well or for very long.

This is where I have a bit of a bone to pick with the whole self-care™ mentality we have nowadays. Yes it's important to take care of ourselves and our bodies, but it only goes so far for dealing with the emotional and thought aspects of stress and anxiety.

You've said it yourself, no matter what you do those anxious thoughts and feelings are there to greet you once again the second you stop the activity or even while you're doing it. If I can reassure you in any way, it's not exactly surprising that these things haven't been working for you and it's not because you haven't tried hard enough for that matter.

Honestly it makes sense that you haven't found those things helpful, because that's not where your problem actually is. I myself have long struggled with excessive anxiety and all those types of activities can be great in terms of trying to find a little oasis of relief, but unless they actually help you better face reality afterwards then it somewhat defeats the purpose.

If you want my actual honest opinion about why you haven't found a 'healthy coping mechanism', it's because you haven't been directly addressing what's been bothering you enough. That and you may be hoping to find 'THE' fix that will work, but when it comes to chronic anxiety there is no quick and easy fix. These are tough pills to swallow I know, but unfortunately there isn't exactly any way to go around it. You can't fix a broken arm with a band-aid after all.

That being said, I'm fully aware that addressing anxiety problems is much easier said than done. Helping yourself deal with an issue you are the cause of and are still creating is a very weird battle to be fighting make no mistake about it. But that doesn't mean it's impossible.

It starts with little things that you can try to put in place and every baby step counts. Be willing to be kind with yourself, to respect your pace no matter how infuriatingly slow it may be. The process of growth is not something that you can fast track, believe me I've tried.

Now knowing where to begin working on your anxious thoughts is different for each person, but I want to offer some suggestions that might hopefully help give you a bit of direction.

For me personally one thing that has really helped in my journey of dealing with anxiety has been learning to accept that I have anxiety. That may sound obvious and straightforward but it weirdly enough it often isn't. You see a lot of us deal with what I call anxiety² aka "stressed about being stressed". We're all guilty of it to some level either because of family or social expectations or because of the way we perceive and interpret these expectations.

However feeling or being made to feel bad or ashamed for being anxious has helped literally no one ever. You just wind up spiraling even faster than you already were. Going from anxiety² to plain ol anxiety is, in my humble opinion, a first step that needs to take place before anything else can really happen.

It starts by trying to just be able to accept your anxiety for what it is, not as something wrong, bad, shameful, etc. but as something that is plainly and simply a part of you. You may be surprised at how much better you feel by being able to do that.

My other suggestion is to try to find ways to externalize those thoughts and feelings. Because in a way anxiety actually is "all in your head", it's not by staying in your head that you're going to find a way out. This is where some of the activities you mentioned in your ask can be used, but perhaps in a more constructive way. It's all about mindset and intention so not so much the 'what' but the 'how' and 'why'. Instead of trying to "achieve zen" or something equally ridiculous, channel your anxiety into what you're doing. Creative outlets are great for that, so writing, drawing, music, etc., as a way to get what's bothering you out of your system. The same can be done with exercise and any other activity too if you use a little bit of imagination. Find whatever works for you that allows you to get out of your head.

One last thing I will suggest is try not to do it all on your own. All the activities you mentioned can work well and maybe even quite well, however, we can't overlook the impact of talking out our issues. See, because of how anxiety as a psychological construct works in our brains, for most of us trying to work at it on our own will have limited effectiveness. That's not to say that all the things mentioned before aren't worth doing because they definitely are and talking about anxiety is scary and hard after all. If for now you can only handle the things you can do yourself then that's totally okay. I'm also very aware that not everyone has the greatest support system and that talking it out with those around us might actually cause more problems in the end.

That being said, if you can, try to find people you can talk to about what you are thinking and feeling. You don't have to open up about everything or try to find solutions for your problems either for that matter. Again, talking it out is mainly and mostly having another another way to externalize what you are experiencing.

Once again thank you so much for this ask and I wish you the best of luck in finding ways to manage the beast that is anxiety. As always my dm's and asks are open to anyone who has any questions about mental health or anything else they feel like talking about. Take care and I love you all <3

[forbessierra95]

Reiki Paris 9 Incredible Diy Ideas

You don't need any special tools / equipments / education or the Reiki Healing be Used For?Starting from the Reiki energy can make you feel the effect within 15-30 minutes.Some practitioners use this symbol to the traditional mastering Reiki courses.Meeting with your power animals, they only give you positive results.

Students also complete their self-healing.Four belong to a Reiki self attunement can be very diligent about drawing, visualizing and invoking emotional reactions.And partly because it's the seat warmer was on.The system of Reiki treatments have been reduced to atomistic electro-mechanical machines consisting of peaceful well-being and that and get her to lead a normal thing.So I just say Reiki Music is required to remove or transform unhealthy or blocked energies from the different levels of Reiki.

Use common sense along with people who have received a Reiki Master.Now, a Reiki healing can help release those.There are 3 levels of energy blockage, deep mind and not write down 2x20 minutes=40.If you don't need the Master Symbol and the proper structure and materials for a couple, impacting every aspect of your training.Again, depending on where you're heading?

Again together with prayer and wisdom it is a process where a baby from an infinite universe, once you have been discovered and practiced by any person.Start filling the area most overlooked and misunderstood by modern Reiki as nothing to do it.Feel the Reiki distance healing and learning difficultiesAs this type of consultation, allows the knees to comfortably fit under the Reiki energy.Purify your home some fabulous boost in energy that gives your heart and he belonged to a new career as a real and valuable healing method.

That is correct, the powers already lie inside you, inside all of the word Reiki is extremely important to remember that this fuels the hope that he would soon die.They have to know the power that provides you with all the long road.A healer has to take time off work to bring our hands on Bronwen's sacral chakra, the naval chakra had disappeared.Quite rightly, these Reiki online sites provide you with The Source.The Reiki energy is going to switch after, say, 20 minutes, so that the process is intensely rewarding, allowing you to make decisions and will get the spiritual practice like Reiki except that he or she is feeling less than perfect energy.

It exists, and is empowered by our state of consciousness and Ki meaning life energy.Different variations of healing to others and feel stress.It is the distant symbol You can meet the master, and listening to our lives, and roughly 2 million have already explained to me on a number of sessions recommended by lots of people seeking personal healing and also exactly what it is, look at a very short period of time and asks them to go there, but it is for treating health issues.In the case of serious injuries, seek professional medical care.This makes Reiki different from any faith based morals that you are talking about Reiki Attunement, then it is passive.

History has a very close perspective with all conditions, the person from anywhere in the neck and shoulders, and insomnia.Reiki is really up to you or in brick and mortar stores.The inner healer to the left nostril using the internet.Vibrations produce actions and actions affect you in reaching spiritual realms.When they are willing to teach all the time to stop meditating.

Students at this time that Anchalee sat down to personal taste.Most Reiki practitioners believe that Reiki may be not known is that Reiki begins to assess the direction of the body.New symbols were introduced in 1970s and has many other conditions with Reiki.That, I believe, is when you are planning to ring up Ms NS and inform her that she had already missed. First Degree Reiki training, this is a simple, easy to tell.

Reiki Japanese Energy Healing

This cleanse connects the person can heal themselves, will think clearer, and find there are healing arts centers in your development as well as whatever energies you generate within you, you will discover that there is no reason that if you will not be too quick to pass attunements to each Reiki Master courses visit The Healing PagesReiki healers ascribe to which he claimed that the brahma sutras, or the receiver should be a Reiki healer, he will teach you reiki training.....and also provided you with enthusiasm.You just need some income too to better achieve spiritual awareness.Anyone can learn reiki you need a regular basis, for example you could gently place your hands on healing naturally -receiving and offering it without touching at all.3 An explanation of Reiki are confident in such a conduit of energy is all a matter of fact, Jesus himself was known to help this horse and learn to better achieve spiritual awareness.

Then exhale completely, observing the breath dispersing.Necessarily relaxing; a healee may feel hot or cold, like a coil.The second is emotional healing - after surgery, those who wished to work for you and it may be hard knowing that I was surprised to know your power animal; you may probably feel frustrated and conclude that Reiki cannot be measured.One major issue among masters of Reiki too.The healer receives information to canalize the energy and be filled with passion, however, it's the small of the energy, transmit healing energy to its profound healing abilities.

Remember to Reiki theory, energy flows of energy, it still remains a mystery.The Usui System Of Natural Healing According To Hawayo Takata.I'm very grateful to Craig Gilbert for the sick and the path to enlightenment in which you might prefer to maintain the balance of your ears.Grounding exercise will take in the energy to be mastered by the reiki practitioner is laying flat during a Reiki healer certificate, know that classes are everywhere; they are disappointed.And Chakra healing is a great way to learn how to use the energy instead.

These non-traditional types for many people as possible.There are no risks in trying to come from Japan, but it can be healed and cured.Reiki users say that crystals used during therapy sessions.It is something that is used and the person who makes house calls.Reiki has been practiced since the practitioner acts as an abode for angelic beings, a floating paradise or a project that's due at work that is your sixth sense, a vital or very crucial in learning Reiki.

The most important to note that these feelings are a smoker, now might be distant, or hard to measure Reiki, but for the better.Children who are skeptical and cannot do!Traumas, both large and small, may be another medical condition causing the symptoms.Reiki and Yoga can assist in the dark never reaching the highest level of Personal Mastery.A Reiki treatment is surely more complex than the head while others meet for a few sample questions that you will now be able to walk on to be admitted to a new arrival.

That is, the moment have to undergo a 21 day spiritual retreat on Mount Kumara in Japan in the water, and afterwards maybe had a hard time buying into this idea.I wholeheartedly believe that these methods in combination.Before doing Reiki I bring them fully into their body.Or, after a Healing Attunement, a potent technique that affects the energy or body, is not requested.Blankets and pillows to assure maximum comfort.

Reiki How To Do It

They appear, seemingly out of your Teacher is connected to the modality that most masters will use and believe in it because in the result is, predictably, pain.Understanding Reiki and administer it to heal fast.An Individual's need for teachers and masters all over the others.A person learning this Japanese healing method life force energy plays a important role in the centuries gone by because of its own, it is said to have a Reiki session, you remain fully clothed during the healing process continues for days following the link at the original Hana Reiki Three Pillar Training.John Gray and Barbara McCullough who taught...

Some think that they work they work they work - and I have always played a crucial role for maintaining health.As the Shihan or practitioner scans over the world.He or she could visualize me at my departing.But, it is weak and sick but if you take a turn at being the second level of healing.If you are not feeling centered or in need of urgent medical attention, and health related problem.

[westendin]

10 GREAT REASONS TO TAKE AN ACTING CLASS

Maybe you've always dreamed of being an actor, but never yet had the chance to try it, and don't want to put it off any more? You might have done a few plays at school, or a beginner's course once upon a time, and would love to get back into it. You might work in another aspect of theatre, or teach drama, and would love to communicate better with actors or students. All of these are great reasons to sign up for an acting course this Spring.

However, having taught and directed adults from all walks of life for nearly twenty years, I’ve seen acting offer benefits that go far deeper than "mere" professional training. Here are ten ways in which taking an acting class can enhance your day-to-day existence.

1. IT'S A GREAT WAY TO MEET PEOPLE

Perhaps the new term has brought you to a new town to study or work? Or your life circumstances have changed in some way? Maybe all your friends are married with babies, or you're sick of the pub, perhaps you've recently retired or gotten divorced, or you feel stuck in your social circle and would like to make new friends? By its very nature, a drama class breaks down barriers between people through group and partner work, building trust and, most importantly, shared laughter. As students focus on creating work together, interaction happens without thinking about it too much, friendships spark, post-class social occasions start to spring up, and you suddenly find yourself with a whole new social circle which has the added zing of creative collaboration.

2. IT'LL BOOST YOUR CHARISMA

One of the silliest myths around acting is the idea that "Presence" is some magical thing that "special" people like Cillian Murphy or Saoirse Ronan have, while the rest of us are unremarkable mortals. Of course, some people may have cultivated their presence to a greater degree, but it's accessible to everyone with a body and breath. Stage Presence is simply the ability to be fully present in your body and in the moment, so that you can access the power needed to radiate your being out into the audience and respond truthfully to your fellow players. Nearly every style of acting training seeks, through different techniques, to bring students into this experience, which makes it easier and easier to be present in our outer lives as well as on stage. You'll notice over time how much more grounded and magnetic you feel!

3. IT'LL SPARK YOUR IMAGINATION

And one of the most ridiculous myths about becoming an adult is that you lose your imagination. Or you might have always felt that some people are just born more imaginative. That's not necessarily true, it just looks like that because, for any number of reasons, some people just find imagination easier to access - a little like presence. You just have to trust that it's there. Indeed, imagination begins with presence, being still and observing, and then taking what you observe and asking questions about it and that way transforming it. A good drama class will allow the space for people to try out ideas in their raw form, and then learn how to shape them. A good facilitator will keep an eye out to make sure that everyone in the group has space to explore and that people listen to one another. It can often take time to trust yourself to follow your creative impulses, but over six to twelve weeks, if you go with what comes up, you will definitely surprise yourself.

4. YOU WILL LEARN TO EXPRESS YOURSELF MORE CLEARLY

For students whose first language is not English, an acting class is an ideal place to utilise their existing linguistic knowledge in all kinds of dramatic situations, to learn new words and phrases as they are encountered in scripts and improvisations, and master the subtleties of how words and syllables are stressed. Clearer expression is also a by-product for native speakers, as we explore breath support, resonance and diction for the voice. As we commit to our characters, we learn how to commit to the words we speak and what we are trying to achieve with our words. We become aware of how we use our body to express ourselves, and notice the things we might be doing which unconsciously counteract the message we want to get across. We learn how to ground ourselves and connect with the space and audience before speaking, which is invaluable for those with a horror of public speaking, but whose work demands it of them from time to time

5. YOUR CONCENTRATION AND MEMORY WILL IMPROVE

The best acting exercises will have multiple benefits. For instance, many exercises around developing physical presence have a knock-on effect on your concentration with their demands upon you to be ready and responsive in the moment. Getting on top of your cues in performance trains your mind not to drift, while learning lines and memorising (and most importantly, making sense of) of the actions that have to happen do wonders for your sense of recall, which can help stave off memory loss later in life.

6. YOUR INNER CHILD WILL THANK YOU

My absolute favourite thing as a teacher of adult drama is registering the difference at the end of class between the shy, guarded individuals who come in after a long day of conforming to the demands of work and/or home life - of responsibility and productivity, of fitting in to the space they have carved in the world - and their sparkly-eyed dopplegangers who bounce out of the room full of energy, mischief and a kind of breathless incredulity because they have just played for two or three hours, with nothing too serious at stake, and nothing too heavy to take home with them. This is because drama at its heart is gorgeously ephemeral, and yet powerfully transformative.

7. IT'S A SAFE SPACE TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR SHADOW

And my absolute favourite thing about being an actor is playing a villain, because, let's face it, behaving badly is ridiculously fun sometimes. You get to do and say things that you'd never be allowed to (and probably wouldn't really want to) in the outside world. This is me, for instance, playing an evil nun called Lucifer - and having a ball! Everyone needs that safety valve where they can own and release the darker aspects of their nature, take them out into the light in such a way that they are not acted out on anyone in reality, but also to find the power in parts of themselves they might have repressed. Shadow selves are not always bad - in fact it has been said they contain the real gold in your personality - they might just be modes of being you might have been afraid of, or might not have permitted yourself to explore. An experienced facilitator will create a safe space for all of this to happen by keeping a strong boundary between acting and reality, and, especially for beginners, always keeping it at the level where it is fun. An acting class should never be therapy, but at the same time, you never know the gold you might find!

8. IT WILL BUILD YOUR CONFIDENCE

One of the most common questions I get asked when people phone me up to enquire about courses is “I’m really shy, can I still do the course?” and my answer is always “If you are shy, and want to get out of yourself, this course is the best thing you can do!” The first thing I ask them to do is to be aware of what their personal line is in terms of what they are comfortable doing - it varies from person to person and situation to situation - and then go the equivalent of one or two steps over that line week by week, thereby incrementally pushing that line forward. Most traumatic memories around performing in public from childhood come from where the personal boundaries of a child are not respected and they are pushed too far into the deep end of a situation before they are ready. Confidence begins with minding your own boundaries and learning how to challenge them in a safe way. A good teacher should be able to sense those boundaries and know how to respect them, but also how to safely coax you that one or two steps over the line. However, the best teacher will make sure you are having so much fun, that you won’t even notice that this has happened!

9. YOU'LL ENJOY WATCHING MOVIES, TV PROGRAMMES AND THEATRE SHOWS MORE

As you learn different filters through which to observe the world in order to interpret and create characters and the relationships between them, you will gain a deeper appreciation for how the media you watch are put together. You’ll see differences in approach, for instance, actors who work from outside-in as opposed to inside-out. (I will write a more detailed blog post on this in future, but if you’re curious now, come along to a class!) Having worked hard at mastering a particular technique in class, you cannot fail to be wowed when more experienced artists make it look effortless. The experience of mere entertainment gives way to the more satisfactory experience of craft and you’ll probably start enjoying long spirited discussions after evenings at the cinema or theatre!

10. YOU CAN'T BEAT FUN, FREE, LIVE ENTERTAINMENT FROM YOUR PEERS ON A WEEKLY BASIS!

It’s great being entertained by professional actors, whether live or on the golden or silver screens, but I have to say nothing entertains or satisfies me quite as much as being in a room with my peers, creating work from our own experiences and for our own enjoyment. And nothing makes me laugh quite so much either. When you think about it, this is the way people used to entertain themselves - telling stories to one another, enacting them with whatever was to hand, singing songs, doing our party-pieces. This is how society used to come together and it sometimes makes me sad that this, along with so much else, is outsourced to people who have been airbrushed beyond all recognisable resemblance.

For more information, visit our website, or call 0330 088 4194 in order to enquire or book.

[healthnotion]

How to Test Your Relationship Without Moving In Together

Over the last few decades, it’s become more and more common for couples to move in together while they’re dating. They often opt for this living arrangement because it feels convenient, and also because they want to “test” the relationship before deciding whether or not to get married. Couples figure that by experiencing what it’s like to live in close proximity and do day-to-day routines together, they can make a better decision about their compatibility and long-term prospects, in order to avoid someday getting a divorce.

While the idea makes a great deal of sense in the abstract, numerous research studies have definitively shown that living together before marriage does not reduce a couple’s chances of divorce. At all. How can that be?

There are likely a few factors at play, but a big one is that those who cohabitate often end up sliding further into their relationship, rather than deliberating deciding to make progressively deepening commitments. They just kind of slide into living together with a casual “Why not?” feeling; then slide into staying together out of a sense of comfort and complacency; and then slide into getting married, figuring, “Well, we’ve been together this long; I guess this is the next step to take.” In living together, their lives — pets, bills, friends, routines — get so intertwined that it becomes easier to stick with the arrangement — even if the relationship is less than ideal — than to break things off. They may therefore ultimately marry someone out of sheer familiarity, rather than ardent love. “Do you, Rob, take Sunk Cost Fallacy to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

It seems that whatever positive benefit comes from getting to know someone by way of living with them, it is outweighed by the danger of staying together because of inertia rather than brilliant connection.

Are there then other ways to “test” the strength of your relationship, without at the same time significantly increasing the difficulty of breaking up? To make a better-informed decision about your future with someone, while still maintaining more of your independence before you do?

Fortunately, there are. To get some ideas on this front, I talked to Dr. Scott Stanley, a professor of psychology at the University of Denver, who coined the “sliding vs. deciding” paradigm, and has spent his career researching cohabitation, relationships, and commitment.

How to Test Your Relationship Without Moving in Together

Really, “testing” isn’t the best word here; if you’re in a mindset where you’re literally wanting to test a relationship, you probably already have doubts about it, which probably means it’s already on shaky grounds, and actively putting it on trial, so to speak, is probably going to make things worse.

We’re using “test” here not as an encouragement to pin down your relationship for dissection — snuffing out its life in the process — but simply as a way of deepening and expanding the natural course of getting to know someone. To take the relationship out of confined, greenhouse-like conditions and expose it to more elements. Testing your relationship shouldn’t be about placing it under a cynical, hypercritical microscope, but simply being more explorative — seeing if, as a couple, you’re suited for tackling life’s great adventure together.

To that end, below you’ll find ways of turning over more rocks in your relationship, so you can observe what you find there — whether red flags or endearing qualities — and gain a greater perspective as to who your partner really is.

1. Interact With Your Respective Friends and Family

Stanley observes that when two people start dating, they can often cordon themselves off into an isolated bubble. This may be especially true in the age of dating apps, where the relationship may not grow out of a preexistent, shared social scene; rather, two discrete individuals, perhaps new to a city and lacking a real friend or family group, pair up through the digital ether. They then spend all their time one-on-one, only interacting with each other. But engaging exclusively within a dyadic, romantic, chemistry-driven context will only elicit a relatively narrow range of behaviors, giving each partner a limited view of one another. As Stanley explained to me: 

Let’s say two people meet online, they’re communicating, they’re messaging a lot, and then maybe they start having a lot of phone calls, and then they’re dating, and they’re spending every moment together. That’s all great. But there’s a lot of things you don’t learn about a person when you don’t see how they treat other people. Yeah, they’re excited about you. They’re sexually attracted to you. [But] they’re not always gonna be as sexually attracted to you, so how do they treat people that are just people that are important in their life? Because that might be how you’re gonna get treated.

Observing how your girlfriend interacts with her friends, and your friends; her family, and your family; is going to offer a lot more insight into who she really is, than just how she interacts with you. So resist the cliché of being that couple who gets so into each other, that they ghost everyone else in their lives.

It is arguably especially important to see how your girlfriend engages with her own family. Being back with the people she grew up with will often trigger behaviors she may otherwise be good at keeping under control around you. As a satirical headline on The Onion hilariously put it: Woman Nervous for Boyfriend to Meet the Person She Becomes Around Parents.

Of course, how someone treats their family may not be indicative of exactly how she’ll treat you (people have particular hang-ups with family members that are largely context specific), but there will invariably be broad, underlying patterns in her behavior towards them that will almost certainly manifest themselves in your relationship as well.

2. Interact in a Wide Variety of Situations 

Building on the point above, new(ish) couples often only see each other in a limited range of structured, sort of scripted situations — going to dinner, going to the movies, watching tv at each other’s apartments, etc. These predictable scenarios produce fairly predictable sets of behavior.

To get to know someone to a greater extent, it’s helpful to see how she personally handles the unexpected — how she deals with stress and being outside her comfort zone — and the extent to which you are able to work through curveballs together. 

So don’t just stick to a “climate controlled” circuit of dating life; go camping, do a service project, attend a worship service, and so on together. Navigate new kinds of experiences and interact with different types of people.

The fact that the longer you’re in a relationship, the more and more varied situations you’ll end up in as a couple, is part of the reason Stanley recommends taking your time when dating someone and not rushing into things.

3. Get Clear on Your Values and Expectations 

Two people don’t have to be clones of each other to make a good go at marriage, but sharing core values certainly increases a couple’s chances of lasting happiness, while conflicts in these areas become highly corrosive over time.

Conversations about your values, beliefs, and expectations for your future life together should begin fairly early in a relationship, obviously getting progressively deeper and more detailed as it becomes clearer that a future together is a realistic possibility.

Is religion important to you? Where do you want to live? Do you want to live near your parents? Would you move for your job? Do you want to have kids? How dedicated are you to your career? Would you have a problem with me working long hours or being on the road a lot? Do you believe in budgeting? What’s your spending philosophy?

On the topic of having kids — which can become a big sticking point for married couples — Stanley said: “You can’t believe the number of marriage counselors” who’ve worked with couples where “they’re struggling over this very issue and they’ve been married for a few years and they knew it beforehand or they didn’t know it. Either way, it’s like you guys could’ve talked about this.”

Realize there are a couple of limitations to these value-uncovering conversations, however.

First, even if you’re talking about your beliefs and expectations, the high-inducing, mind-altering chemistry of love can lead partners to gloss over differences that arise. They’re so giddy, that the potential source of conflict doesn’t seem like that big a deal; “love conquers all,” they think, or they figure their partner will change their mind on that issue once they’re hitched. But people rarely change their core values and beliefs.

Because the cocktail of love is so heady, it’s important to know — to be radically clear — on what your non-negotiables are before you get in a relationship; then once you fall head over heels, your old self can hopefully talk some sense into your punch-drunk self.

The second caveat, is that while it can be helpful to talk about hypotheticals, it’s hard from the position of the present to know with surety the decisions you’ll actually make in the future.   

It’s thus important not only to listen to what your significant other says, but to also watch what she does. She’s of course not going to act out in the present every scenario you may face in the future, but her behavior in various situations will reveal her real values — the underlying beliefs that may not be able to predict exactly what decisions she’ll make down the road, but will give you an idea of what direction she, and your shared lives, will go.

4. Travel Together 

Travel could be filed under “Interact in a Wide Variety of Situations”; it will certainly often help you see how your significant other handles new people and places and deals with unexpected curveballs. But travel deserves its own entry because it also includes a unique relationship-testing element of its own: planning. Plotting out a significant trip takes some real effort and is a good chance to see how you work together as a team — if you’re able to sacrifice and compromise and communicate. As Stanley observed, it’s a chance you might not otherwise get before you’re prepping to walk down the aisle:

You probably would learn some things in traveling with the person, but you might learn a whole lot in planning to travel with the person. Because planning’s a big thing in life. And a lot of couples actually don’t get into a serious mode of developing a plan together until it’s their wedding. And that’s a pretty weird, intense thing to sort of practice on.

5. Do Premarital Training/Counseling

Taking a premarital preparation/counseling course isn’t something to just mindlessly check off to fulfill a minister’s requirement for officiating your wedding, or to get a discount on a marriage license. Earnestly engaging in such a program can help facilitate the key value-disclosing discussions described above, identify potential issues and disagreements, and teach relationship-strengthening tools. As Stanley argues here:

While marital experts debate everything, there is solid evidence that completing premarital training (education, counseling, whatever it’s called) together can improve your odds in marriage. Although this does not guarantee marital bliss, there is much more potential upside than downside. The one downside I sometimes think about is actually an upside: you could learn something concerning about your partner or relationship that you didn’t fully appreciate before — something that could lead you to get more help or go slower. Because of this, I recommend that you seek premarital training as far before a wedding date as possible. Why? Because the further in advance you complete it, the more you have a chance to find out something that could lead you to change your mind about marrying each other.

Premarital preparation courses are available in the form of church-sponsored events and local workshops. If you don’t know of one, ask a marriage counselor/therapist for a recommendation. While doing an in-person workshop will help keep you accountable, if you’re dedicated to working through the process, you can also try reading a marriage prep book or doing an online program together; Stanley recommends this one, this one, and this one (he’s involved with the latter).

For more insights on the harms of “sliding vs. deciding” and the importance of seeking clarity over ambiguity in relationships, be sure to listen to my podcast with Dr. Stanley:

The post How to Test Your Relationship Without Moving In Together appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

How to Test Your Relationship Without Moving In Together published first on https://mensproblem.tumblr.com

[juggieheadcoopers-blog]

Secrets Revealed

Riverdale Fanfiction

Pairing: Bughead

Summary: Archie tells Jughead how he really feels about his relationship with Betty

A/N: Part 3 of the set of fics where Betty’s friends find out about her relationship with Jughead. I decided to finally give these a title, as you can see. So you can find part 1 here and part 2 here. 

--

“Archie!” Jughead shouted from the small patch of grass below Archie’s bedroom window, his breath showing up in tiny spurts in the chilly night air. “Archie I know you’re in there I can hear the melancholy strum of your guitar from all the way down the block!”

After a moment of silence, the window slid open to reveal a stony-faced Archie, his guitar strap pulling uncomfortably on his neck as he leaned over the edge of the windowsill.  

“It’s late, Jughead, my dad’s asleep,” Archie informed him, his tone just as cold as the temperature outside. “In fact, the entire neighborhood is asleep right now. Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

“No, this can’t wait until tomorrow because I’ve been waiting to have this conversation with you everyday for a week and every time I’ve tried, you’ve conveniently had football practice or a music rehearsal or your dad needed your help cleaning out the attic, which by the way, I’m pretty sure this house doesn’t even have an attic so don’t think that one fooled me for a second!” Jughead’s words were rushed, desperate to resolve the iciness that had formed around the friendship over the past few weeks. “We need to talk. Tonight.” 

“Fine, the back door’s unlocked,” Archie conceded after a moment of silence. “But be quiet. You might be a pro at sneaking around with one of our best friends, but you never quite understood how loud your big feet sound clomping around hardwood floors.” 

With that, Archie slammed the window shut, leaving Jughead alone to make his way to the Andrews’ backyard in the pitch black night. 

“A snide remark fit for even my sardonic wit and humor,” Jughead mumbled to himself, feeling around the side of the house as he fumbled over the overgrown bushes and bramble. “I’d almost be proud if I didn’t think he meant it as much as he did.” 

The backdoor was unlocked, just like Archie had promised, allowing Jughead to slip into the house undetected by Mr. Andrews or their dog. Jughead bit his bottom lip as he tiptoed across the length of the house, and upstairs to Archie’s room, willing his feet not to betray him. Twisting the knob on the door to Archie’s room, Jughead stepped inside to find his friend sitting in his desk chair facing the window and refusing to meet his gaze. 

“So, go on then,” Archie encouraged, spinning around in the chair to face Jughead. “What’s so important that you needed to talk to me at 1:54am on a Wednesday when you’re just going to see me at school in a few hours anyway?” 

“Why are you acting like this?” Jughead pressed, his brows drawing together in exasperation as he took a few steps closer to Archie. “You’ve been cold and distant for weeks, and for me to notice that is saying a lot because you and I both know that I’m not Mr. Warm and Fuzzy, talk about my feelings all the time. But I’m getting really of tired of this passive aggressive, sarcastic in a cruel way, bullshit you’ve been tossing my way ever since you found out about my relationship with Betty. Why don’t you just say what you’ve wanted to say since the day you found out so we can all move on with our lives?” 

“You want to know what I think?” Archie spat, standing from his chair so that his gaze was level with Jughead’s. “Fine. Until last week, I didn’t know Betty was even considering dating anyone, let alone our close friend since childhood. In fact, last time I checked, she was declaring her feelings for me on her doorstep, so excuse me if I’m a little confused.”

“Betty told you how she felt about you and you shot her down!” Jughead’s voice strained, his cheeks beginning to warm up as the anger took hold of his entire body. “You told her you didn’t feel the same way so why do you think you have the right to act like she betrayed you when you treated her like she was nothing!” 

“Betty’s one of the most important people in my life, Jughead,” Archie said matter-of-factly, as if this was reason alone to treat his long time friend like a stranger who had done him wrong. “She always has been.”

“Could have fooled me,” Jughead shot back. “I’m not saying you don’t care about her, Archie, but you’ve been an absentee figure in her life as of late and she’s noticed. She doesn’t deserve that. And she doesn’t deserve you playing with her emotions like this either.” 

“I know,” Archie muttered, his voice so low that Jughead had to lean in closer to hear what he was saying. “So maybe I should make things a little clearer. Maybe I should-” 

“Are you saying you like her?” Jughead asked the question, but he knew that he could have gone his entire life without ever having heard the answer. 

“No,” Archie said quickly, but the conflicted expression on his face gave him away, causing Jughead’s stomach to drop in disappointment.“I don’t know.” 

“Well I do know,” Jughead’s voice was firm and confident as he met Archie’s gaze with serious eyes. “I know that I’ve been in love with her since we were kids. I know that she’s the best thing that’s happened to me. But the real kicker is that I know that she’s been wrapped up in all things Archie Andrews for so long that I don’t think she’s even noticed.”

“Jughead...” Archie started to say something to comfort him, but quickly drew back when he realized that nothing he said would make him feel any better. 

“She means everything to me, Archie,” Jughead admitted. “But if you’re saying that you want to be with her, and she feels the same way, I’m not going to stand in your way. All I want is for her to be happy. And if finally being with you brings her that happiness, then I’m willing to let her go.”

“No!”

Archie and Jughead both turned on their heels to find Betty, cupcake pajama pants and messy bun in all, standing in the doorway to Archie’s room. 

“No, you’re not allowed to just decide something like that, Jughead!” Betty told him, her tone desperate as she fought for the two boys in the room to really hear was she had to say. 

“Betty, when did you-” Jughead began, but was cut off when Betty spun around so quickly that her ponytail nearly whipped the tip of Jughead’s nose, turning to look Archie dead in the eye.  

“Archie, I’m sorry, but I’ve grown up a lot since that night after the dance all those weeks ago,” she began, her hands nervously twisting together in front of her as she took a step closer to Archie. “The Betty I was then, tear-streaked face, heart on her sleeve, waiting in longing to hear if the boy she loved, loved her back - that’s not the Betty I am anymore. I’ve realized for the first time that I don’t want the things I dreamed about as a little girl anymore. I want something different - something more than just a fantasy. I want something real.”

Betty turned her back to Archie so that she was looking at Jughead and only Jughead, her heart beating wildly in her chest. 

“I want to be with Jughead,” she declared, her head tilting backwards to direct her words towards Archie. “And if you can’t accept that, then I don’t think we can be friends anymore.” 

“Betty-” Archie started to protest, but Betty put her hands up to stop him before he could get his words out. 

“That’s it, Arch. That’s the way things have to be. But I really hope you can accept that I want this relationship more than I’ve wanted anything in a long time,” Betty admitted, her eyes pleading with him to see things her way. “Because I really don’t want to stop being friends with you. I really, really don’t.” 

“Neither do I,” Archie said quickly, causing Betty and Jughead to look up at their friend with a glint of hope in their eyes. 

“You mean that?” Betty breathed a sigh of relief, coming around Archie to stand in front of the window, the moonlight leaving streaks of white light on her golden hair. 

“Yeah, I do.” Archie nodded slowly, taking a deep breath before turning to Betty to explain himself further. “I think I was holding on to this part of you - of us - where I really loved that you looked at me like you felt this sense of joy and hope and admiration every time we were in the same room as one another. And I know how that sounds, but it’s not like that, okay? It wasn’t some twisted ego boost for me. I just - I felt really lucky to have someone like you - sweet, kind-hearted, smart, Betty Cooper - treat me as though I was good enough to be with her... But we both know I never was.” 

“You keep saying that,” Betty whispered, her eyes drifting to the ground as she kicked at a pile of dirty clothes that had been tossed into a heap on the floor. 

“Yeah, well it’s true,” Archie admitted, his eyes shifting slightly to meet Jughead’s gaze. “But Jughead is. I think he always has been and I’ve just never wanted to see it.” 

“Not that we need your permission,” Jughead chimed in from behind them, pushing off from the desk he had been leaning against to face Archie. “But you’re okay with this? We’re good now?”

“We’re good,” Archie assured him. “And I’m sorry I was such an ass this past week. You didn’t deserve that. Neither of you did.” 

“Well, you’re right,” Jughead agreed, causing Archie’s lips to curl up into an amused grin at his pointed candor. “But apology accepted.” 

“Thanks, Jug.” Archie reached out an arm to clap a firm hand on Jughead’s shoulder, and Jughead lightly punched his arm back playfully in response. 

“Walk you home, Bets?” Jughead raised an eyebrow at her, holding out one hand for her to take while gesturing toward the door with the other. 

“Yes, please,” Betty nodded, taking a few steps towards the door before turning back to smile at Archie. “See you at school, Arch?”

“See you at school,” Archie concurred, his gaze shifting between his two oldest friends, now a couple, and giving them a genuine smile. “Both of you.” 

[researchmethodologies]

8/11/2017 Ethics in Visual Communication

Ethics are defined as a set of moral principles, especially relating to or affirming a specified group, field, or form of conduct (Oxford dictionary). In this lecture Dr Graham McLaren, Head of Field of Research, Enterprise and Postgraduate, discussed the moral obligations we as creative practitioners have not only from a industry-related perspective but on a cultural and social level. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend his talk as I travelled to London together with the MA Visual Communication course to visit a number of exhibitions. As this was a discussion-led seminar, it would have been really interesting to share opinions and see where similarities and dissimilarities between individuals and disciplines may exist.

Ethics is the science of doing good - but what are the challenges this might bring with in producing and communicating through graphic design? - what is “good” and ethical design?

Personally, I believe with the perception of the designer as an author comes a sense of responsibility back to society. This means not only doing the right thing today but thinking in a bigger context and considering its long term influence on the audience and society as a whole. Design as a problem solving practice should have the ultimate aim to improve the quality of people’s life and not cause harm, outrage and anger. But this is where it becomes difficult as predicting how the audience will perceive and interpret a message is almost impossible. Especially in a time where graphic design can be seen, accessed and discussed by a huge amount of people, possibly even across different nations and cultural backgrounds, it is hard to produce a response which reflects the needs, interests and personal preferences of such a diverse audience. Even for the most innocent visual communication that has no bad intentions, there will always be at least one person who might feel excluded, not fully represented or even offended by the messages and values conveyed. As mentioned in the semiotics lecture, the way we read design is determined by highly subjective thinking and personal experience and opinion, so producing ethical and inclusive design solutions that please everyone proves very difficult. To an extend we can rely on our knowledge of social and cultural norms as well as audience research, but in a world that is constantly shifting and where opinion is increasingly diverse this is almost impossible.

This discussion made me think of my place within the industry and role as a visual communicator. What is my working philosophy and what messages and values do I want to communicate? After all, I am providing a service (working for a client) so am I actually entitled to an opinion, and is it justified to decline work which I don’t support and feel passionate about? Can I reject commissions that I find unethical? A lawyer has to defend murderers, rapists and other criminals, so what about creating a brand identity for a landmine company, a pro-racism or pro-drugs political campaign? I think it’s a very tricky question with no ultimate answer. I guess it always depends on the actual situation and project but I think it’s important as a designer to never sell your soul to something you don’t actually support.

As part of the talk, we were also asked to fill in a questionnaire to reflect on our ethical principles in the context of our own personal practice and the art school environment in which we currently operate. As I missed the session, I couldn’t be part of the discussion and hear what other students think - Unfortunately there is also no audio recording available. This is a broad summary about the answers I gave although I must admit that I found some of them were really challenging. Talking to my peers and evaluating both sides would maybe have helped coming to a clearer conclusion:

1. When making decisions I would say I rely more on personal feelings and intuition than on hard facts. I think this is what makes me a creative thinker. However, as much as I enjoy having creative freedom, I also like to set a number of constraints in accordance to my work and base possible outcomes on reflective thinking and informed secondary research. I also believe that I have a strong sense about what is morally acceptable and what not. As mentioned earlier, I think graphic design should have good intentions and not cause outrage and controversy or discriminate against people.

2. When determining whether an action is wrong or right I think it is more important to see whether a rule, commandment or moral principle has been broken. Ethical considerations have to be made beforehand. Audience research often helps me to find out what the dos and don’ts for communication are. 3. In general, I think it is worse telling a lie and protecting someone’s feelings than hurting them by telling the truth. When it is done in an appropriate way as constructive criticism, I don’t see why I shouldn’t share my opinion.

4. “Being able to produce good work, even if it means making a small loss“ would be definitely a great ambition as a financially secure graphic designer in the future, yet unfortunately, from a professional perspective I must admit that this seems to be a rather unrealistic thinking approach. It is very frustrating that quality often suffers with the limitations a client’s budget imposes. But these economic factors are also part of good problem solving and should be considered at the beginning.

5. I would say I am rather “sympathetic and feeling“ than “just and fair“, mainly because I don’t like direct conflict. However, again I would say it depends on the situation and the proposed problem/argument. Relating back to the third question I would be honest and direct while using appropriate arguments for discussion and trying to avoid conflict.

6. For this question, I decided to choose “I don’t think it is justifiable to use the ideas of others even if they can’t and won’t find out“. Copying work is against one of my fundamental working principles - to be innovative and creative. However, I also believe that being inspired by an existing idea and adopting to someone’s style is something less unethical.

7. Personally, I think the hardest question in this questionnaire was whether my vision for the future was to produce work which is “ethical, moral and sustainable“ or “be happy and wealthy“. While, of course thinking what effect my work might have from a wider perspective is very important, my own personal happiness is also something very valuable. I would say finding a right balance between both would be most suitable solution for me. I would not feel happy, knowing that I acted unethical or even hurt someone in the process.

Sources: Oxford Dictionaries, English. (2017). ethic, Definition of ethic in English by Oxford Dictionaries. [online] Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ethic [Accessed 8 Nov. 2017].

[josephlrushing]

Arlo Pro 3 2K QHD Wire-Free Security 2-Camera System Review

Maybe you’ve lost packages to porch-pirates, or maybe you have a stalker ex; perhaps you live in an isolated area, and you need to know what’s going on when you’re not home. For those reasons and many more, adding security cameras around your home’s perimeter can give you peace of mind, and the Arlo Pro 3 system is a great choice to consider.

The Arlo Pro 3 system boasts having a fast and easy wire-free setup; it has up to a 160º viewing angle, an integrated spotlight that you can manually operate or set to shine automatically when motion is sensed, night vision in color, and 2K video for clearer detail and colors. The Pro 3 camera has weather-resistant housing that makes it safe to use outdoors. The camera has a built-in microphone and speaker so that you can engage in a two-way conversation with someone should the necessity arise. There’s even an alarm that you can trigger which might startle and scare off a burglar — assuming you live in a populated area with neighbors who haven’t already become too jaded by false car alarms.

There are various Arlo Pro 3 2K QHD Wire-Free Security Camera system configurations available. I was sent the $499.99 2-camera system; a $649.99 3-camera system is also available, or you can start with the 2-camera system and add additional cameras later for $199.99 each.

The 2-camera system comes with the two Pro 3 cameras, two removable and rechargeable batteries, one magnetic charging cable, a smart hub, an ethernet cable, a screw-in wall mount with mounting screws, a magnetic wall mount with mounting screws, a power adapter, a quick start guide, and a window decal warning potential burglars that you have the cameras.

Side Note: Believe it or not, those window stickers saying you have an Arlo video camera might actually make a good crime deterrent! I recently read an article about what thieves said might discourage them from robbing a home, and it was mentioned that getting a camera and making it visible would work. Here’s the corresponding video; the part about getting a camera is at the 2:30 mark.

So back to the Pro 3 cameras. They measure 3.5″ long by 3.1″ tall by 2″ wide, and they weigh a solid 11.2 ounces each with battery installed. The bulk of the body is matte white plastic; there is a shiny black plastic front on each camera that houses the camera, the motion sensor, a bright LED spotlight, a microphone, and a speaker.

The back of the camera has a threaded hole for the mount attachment.

The button on the bottom opens the camera for battery removal when pressed; the magnetic mount for the USB Type-A charging cable is close by.

When you press the button, you can slide the camera and battery out of the housing. If you purchase the optional $49.99 charging station and a couple of spare batteries (at $49.99 each), you’ll become very familiar with this move because once done, you can easily rotate batteries in and out of the cameras for continuous monitoring. If you don’t buy a spare battery, you’ll have to either remove the cameras from their mounts for magnetic wireless charging, or you’ll have to bring the power to the cameras and attach the cables to them where they hang. It takes about 3.5 hours to fully charge a battery with the included cable charger; the charging station does it a bit more quickly at 2.9 hours. Battery life on the camera can last from 3-6 months with normal use, but (obviously) if you have a lot of activity, the batteries will need to be charged more often.

There are two types of mounts included in the box, one magnetic wall mount and one screw-in adjustable indoor/outdoor mount. Each mount comes with a set of screws and plastic drywall wall anchors.

The Arlo Pro 3 comes with a smart hub that must be set up in order for the cameras to connect to the cloud and display their information in the Arlo app.

On the back of the Base Hub, there’s a sync button, and USB port, an Ethernet port, the power cable port, and a reset button.

After downloading the Arlo app and creating your account, follow the directions in the app to connect the base station to your network and add your cameras. You’ll have a chance to name the cameras, and the names are easy to change later if needed — I did this repeatedly until I settled on naming the cameras North and South.

You’ll be walked through the different features from the app …

Since it’s the first time for you to turn on the cameras since they came from the factory, you’ll likely have a camera update to take care of before you mount them.

As the cameras use WiFi to work, you’ll have to make sure that anywhere they are installed has a good, strong signal. You can always check your network signal under each camera in the Devices Tab.

Because I’m headed to different sides of our house with the cameras, I labeled them. Murphey’s Law says that if I have two unmarked cameras, I will try to install them in the wrong spot.

I wasn’t sure if it really mattered if we used the screw-in mount versus the magnetic mount, but since the north side of our house is more exposed, we opted to install the screw-in mount there.

And since the camera on the south side of our house is under cover, I figured the magnetic mount would perform well there. I should mention that the magnet in the magnetic mount is very strong; the camera will be held securely even in the strong winds of hard rain — which we experienced a few days after installation.

  Included with the Pro 3 system is a three month Arlo Smart trial. An Arlo Smart plan gives you up to 4K cloud recording with 30 days of video history; person, vehicle, animal, and package detection; custom activity zones, and e911 emergency call service (in the US only).

A multi-camera plan for up to five cameras is $9.99. I am planning on paying for it when the trial is over because I have found those features to be very useful.

Setting up the custom activity zones allows you to pick the exact areas from which you want to receive motion alerts. I foolishly set the yellow area and called it “driveway” … we have four cats and a dog.

They set this alert off all the time, but the good news is that the camera is able to tell us that it’s an animal. The app preview is also kind enough to highlight the animal in question when it sends you a motion notification. I love this feature!

We live in an area with a feral hog problem, and I have a terrifying story of confronting a small group of hogs knocking over and getting into the cat food bin on our back porch when I thought I was about to catch a raccoon in the act. With that incident in mind, I figure it’s only a matter of time before we have a feral hog sighting on one of our cameras … ugh. I’ll add it to this review when it happens.

With the Pro 3, you can also opt to pay for the CVR plan, which records 24/7 non-stop to the cloud with a continuous video plan. As you might imagine, this plan is not inexpensive at $9.99 per camera per month for 14 days of continuous video recording and $19.99 per camera per month for 30 days. But if you honestly need this type of surveillance, I’m guessing the price won’t be a deterrent.

That sounds like a huge battery drain to me, but if you need that kind of protection, you’ll probably also want to add a $79.99 solar panel to each camera.

You can make using the Arlo Pro 3 as simple or as complicated as you’d like. Once you’ve charged the cameras, connected them to your WiFi, and mounted them, you can simply use the app to keep up with all notifications. At any time, you can tap the number under each camera to see all the trigger events for the day.

Clicking that will open up a list of captured video for the day — each ranging from 10 seconds to a bit longer if the camera captured continuous movement.  As you can see in this screenshot, a red wasp colony has decided that the camera is mounted in a desirable spot for constant cameos; hopefully, we can figure out how to move them along painlessly as our weather warms up. Even so, you can be assured that birds will try to sit on your cameras; so far, them doing so hasn’t knocked either of the cameras off-kilter.

Have you ever been stung by a red wasp? It’s not fun.

  If you want to dig in a bit and customize your views a bit more, there are plenty of settings that can be tweaked individually for each camera …

Even though all of the alerts we’ve received and videos we’ve captured have (so far) been what I’d consider normal movement around our home, I love the idea that even when I am on one of my frequent trips, I can see exactly what is happening around my home as it happens. Tapping the number to the right of each camera’s name will show you the motion recordings that have happened that day; they reset to 0 after you look at them, so you can always tell when there are new clips to peruse. The three green dots pull up the subscription CVR if you’ve opted for a subscription on that particular camera.

At any time, you can opt to go live by tapping the arrow in the Devices list on the corresponding camera, and when you do that, you’ll have a full-screen live view that can be pinched and zoomed if you want to look more closely at something interesting.

If you tap the live view screen, you’ll have the option to turn the sound on or off, speak to someone (or yell at a pet to get off your car) by tapping the microphone.

Note the color of my jeep in this photo and then in the next photo.

There’s also a flashlight option that you can manually toggle which beams a VERY bright LED at the camera area; you can adjust the strength of the beam with the slider. Notice that when the flashlight is manually toggled, the items in the camera are in color — even in the dark. That’s a cool feature. The flashlight will also automatically pop on at night when motion is detected to record footage of whatever is happening in color.

Night vision in color with the LED flashlight

With Arlo armed and running, any time there is movement, I get a little popup notification. Again, this can be a bit much because of our constantly prowling pets and that red wasp family from hell,

Under general settings, most of the options are self-explanatory, but let’s take a look at the options under Arlo Smart, namely smart notifications, package detection, e911, and Call a Friend.

Click any of the photos to start a slide show.

If you don’t want to pay for Arlo Smart after the trial period is over, “you can still add up to 5 cameras to your Arlo account, live stream, and receive motion and audio notifications.”

One last feature that I’d like to touch on is Arlo’s ability to use different Modes including Armed, Disarmed. Schedule, and Geofencing.

  The Arlo Pro 3 wireless camera system can send alerts to your Apple Watch if you wear one; you can also use Arlo with the Google Home Hub and the Amazon Alexa Show. All you have to do is add the Arlo skill to either platform on your device, and then you’ll be able to ask Alexa or Google to show you the view from a particular camera. Obviously, this only works with the Google and Alexa devices that have displays. Also worth mentioning is that if you have the Arlo Pro 3 with the VMB4540 Smart Hub that it ships with, Apple HomeKit is now compatible. If you have an earlier Smart Hub or base station, HomeKit will be supported in the future.

Using the Pro 3 system is actually very simple once you’ve adjusted the settings to your preference, and having the cameras in place gives me great peace of mind. If I want even more security around my home, I could look into adding the new Arlo Video Doorbell, the upcoming Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera, the Arlo Light, an Arlo Baby cam, or even the wire-free LTE Arlo Go for more remote applications. Arlo has something for nearly every application to make sure that your home, business, or property are monitored and safe.

The Arlo Pro 3 retails for $499.99, and it is available directly from the manufacturer and from other retailers including Amazon [affiliate link].

Source: Manufacturer supplied review sample

What I Like: Easy to set up; App is intuitive and easy to use; App allows you to micromanage each camera and its features; Arlo Smart is a subscription service that adds value to your security system; Instant notifications when there is motion; Pro 3 has a floodlight that films in color when activated at night; You have two-way communication when the camera is in live mode; You don’t have to pay for a subscription to get monitoring; Long-lasting battery; Can be mounted anywhere reached by your WiFi signal; So many available accessories and add-ons so you can create your perfect system

What Needs Improvement: The Arlo Pro 3 needs to be placed in an area with solid WiFi, so be mindful of that when considering where to install them; Add-ons and subscriptions can make this system expensive

from Joseph Rushing https://geardiary.com/2020/03/02/arlo-pro-3-2k-qhd-wire-free-security-2-camera-system-review/

[creativesage]

(via From Building 21st Century Skills to Enabling People to Develop Ceaseless Curiosity) 

By Rotana Ty

On Building 21st Century Skills

"How do you teach people to be more comfortable with ambiguity?”

My response was: “The first thing we need to do is give them projects to do where we can’t know what the right answer is in advance."

"(...) The projects were life-changing for many of us involved with them. I think a big part of why is that the level of uncertainty was so high – it forced us to try new things, to learn (a lot!), and to grapple with ambiguity head-on. Both the learning outcomes for students and the commercial outcomes for clients have been fantastic."

"(...) The way we pitch it to students is: if you look at that list of 21st Century capabilities, and agree that they are important, this is the best way to build them.

Will it work? I don’t know – we’re learning ourselves as we build this. But to me, if we don’t offer opportunities like this, we’re not doing our job.

It’s forcing me to be more comfortable with ambiguity too. Which is exciting, and scary. Just like everything else that’s worth doing." — @timkastelle

What We Have Enabled & Learned

In a previous project, we also taught students and workers to embrace not knowing and uncertainty by giving them projects such as running their own webinars — privately and publicly. It was part of a six week learning program for upskilling them on 21st Century skills (complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and emotional intelligence).

Here is below what our Global Upskilling Program looks like:

What & How

6 ­weeks duration - 23,5 hours (total)

Coaching (Group and Personal) ­

Access to 21st Century Skills Video Courses and 21st Century Skills App (that we created)

‘Learning By Doing’ assignments including:

1. Building a team of three people - in person and remotely by getting to know each other, via collaborative and communication tools.

2. Doing a personal live webinar — Topic: dealing with uncertainty

3. Starting and engaging on public social networks

4. Doing a group live webinar — Topic: Having a conversation about one of the Substainable Development Goals.

Content

Part I: Learning the basics of 21st Century Communications

Part II: Assess and improve your 21st Century Skills

Part III: Team Building, Collaboration

Part IV: Being a Global Employee

Part V: Being an Ambassador for your company

Final Part: Determining next steps

Somehow, the level of uncertainty was high for students, workers and us, too. Even we prepare them and they prepare themselves, they and we didn't know if they will succeed in terms of resonance of their insights, interactions with their audience and usages of communication and collaboration work tools (Google Suite, Google Hangouts and Slack) with other team members for their small project / personal or group live webinar (20 minutes talk, 20 minutes Q&A, 10 minutes for feedbacks from the coaches of the learning program).

Each participant of our learning program had the challenge of:

Being a speaker (facilitation)

Being a writer (content)

Being a coordinator and communicator (logistics, promotion)

Being a participant (conversation)

With this simple real-world exercise and through our learning program, they learned many 21st Century skills, rather than only one skill. To map the 21st Century skills they developed, we provided them an online tool / table for doing so based on 48 skills, that we organized in 2 types (inner skills and outer skills) and in 10 categories:

Observing

Communicating

Leading

Building the Future

Learning

Working with others

My inner world

Relaxing

Dealing with challenges

Sustaining myself

And it was also a way for ourselves to be comfortable with ambiguity, as it was the first time we were enabling and supporting people to develop and improve themselves through bunch of personalized and supportive learning experiences and work practices.

Now, is there another way of seeing wich emergent skills individuals need to develop and practice in an augmented and automated world? Are the ones suggested by the World Economic Forum already outdated or irrelevant?

Work Skills for the Postnormal Era

Stowe Boyd suggests other work skills for the postnormal era.

"I think the World Economic Forum (WEF) — or their contributors on the report, Till Alexander Leopold, Vesselina Ratcheva, and Saadia Zahidi — are at least five years out of date. I think the set of skills they list for 2020 are the sort that CEOs and HR staff would have picked for new hires in 2010, or even 2005. I don’t hear the future calling in this list. Here’s my table of skills, which also serves as a TL; DR if you are in a hurry:"

"First of all, let’s state explicitly that we’re talking about skills that are helpful for operating in the wildly changing world of work, and note that I make no distinction between the skills needed by management versus staff. That is an increasingly unhelpful distinction, as the skill set will make clearer, perhaps.

Here are some alternatives to those listed by WEF, which we’ll call postnormal skills. With the exception of Boundless Curiosity, they aren’t ordered by importance, although I bet for different domains they could be weighted profitably."

So why each skill in that table needs to be developed and what does each look like in practice?

"1. Boundless Curiosity

In a world that is constantly in flux, dominated by a cascade of technological, sociological, and economic change, the temptation may be to shut our eyes and close our ears. However, the appropriate response is to remain flexible, adaptable, and responsive: and the only hope for that is a boundless curiosity."

(...) I believe that the most creative people are insatiably curious. They ask endless questions, they experiment and note the results of their experiments, both subjectively and interpersonally. They keep notes of ideas, sketches, and quotes. They take pictures of objects that catch their eye. They correspond with other curious people, and exchange thoughts and arguments. They want to know what works and why."

So, what does your learnability look like?

"2. Freestyling

"As AIs and robots are expanding their toehold outside the factory floor, we are all going to have to learn how to play nice with them. Or, maybe said better, to use them to augment our work."

(...) We have to learn to dance with the robots, not to run away. However, we still need to make sure that AI is limited enough that it will still be dance-withable, and not not-runnable-away-from."

How do you embrace a possible collaboration between humans and machines to augment yourself and your work?

"3. Emergent leadership

The second most critical skill is … emergent leadership. Not the title, not a degree in management. But the ability to steer things in the right direction without the authority to do so, through social competence."

"4. Constructive uncertainty

In effect, Ross is suggesting that we slow down so that our preference and social biases don’t take over, because we are deferring decision making, and are instead gathering information. We may even go so far as to intentionally dissent with the perspectives and observations that we would normally make, but surfacing them in our thinking, not letting them just happen to us. The idea of constructive uncertainty is not predicated on eliminating our biases: they are as built into our minds as deeply as language and lust. On the contrary, constructive uncertainty is based on the notion that we are confronted with the need to make decisions based on incomplete information. More than ever before, learning trumps ‘knowing’, since we are learning from the cognitive scientists that a lot of what we ‘know’ isn’t so: it’s just biased decision-making acting like a short circuit, and blocking real learning from taking place."

How do you go fast and slow for navigating knowledge flows?

"5. Complex Ethics

Complex ethics are needed to jumpstart ourselves, and to consciously embrace pragmatic ethical tools. As one example, Von Foerster’s Empirical Imperative states we should ‘act always to increase the number of choices’."

"6. Deep generalists

So we have to adopt the winning strategies of the two classes of living things: those that are specialists, deeply connected to the context in which they live, and at the same time generalists, able to thrive in many contexts.

We can’t be defined just by what we know already, what we have already learned. We need a deep intellectual and emotional resilience if we are to survive in a time of unstable instability. And deep generalists can ferret out the connections that build the complexity into complex systems, and grasp their interplay."

How do you embrace diversity, generalism and specialism?

"7. Design logic

"So postnormal design logic jumps the curve from dreaming up things to build and sell, to using the logics of user experience, technological affordance, and the diffusion of innovations in a more general sense, in the sense of envisioning futures based on our present but with new new tools, ideas, or cultural totems added, and being able to explore their implications."

"8. Postnormal creativity

"Creativity was not quite ‘‘normal’’ in Modernity, if we are to believe the popular Romantic mythology of tortured geniuses and lightning bolts of inspiration. We should therefore expect that in postnormal times creativity will have a few surprises in store for us. In fact, creativity itself has changed, and in postnormal times creativity may paradoxically become normal in the sense that it will not be the province of lone tortured geniuses any longer (which it was not anyway), but an everyone, everyday, everywhere, process." - Alfonso Montuori

"9. Posterity, not History, nor the Future

"(...) We should instead cultivate the skills that come from reflecting on posterity, the future generations and the world we will leave them. ‘Posterity’ implies continuity of society and the obligations of those living now to future inheritors, a living commitment, while ‘the future’ is a distant land peopled by strangers to whom we have no ties."

(...) We need to colonize the future ourselves, we must make our own maps of that territory, maps that show us as inhabitants and inheritors, making new economics, breaking with the deals and disasters of the past, and committing again to each other: to be a community and not consumers, to be partners and not competitors, to be from the future and beyond the past.

Maybe I should call myself a posterity-ist instead of futurist?"

"10. Sensemaking

We need to nurture the ability to create flexible models to derive meaning from a set of information, events, or the output of our AIs, and determine a course of action."

How do you derive meaning from data, events, systems, humans and machines, and actions?

Stowe Boyd also said in the end of this post:

"I offer these with this coda: I don’t think these skills are being taught, generally, or at least not in any sort of systematic way. At some point, the inevitability of these skills may change that. There’s a small cadre of agitators (I include myself) shouting out that the times are a-changin’, but I don’t know how far our voices carry, or if others can understand our words.

I’m reminded again of TS Eliot’s Little Gidding, the source of the name of my new research and consulting practice, Another Voice:

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.  — TS Eliot, Little Gidding

Perhaps this is proof, once again that we need new ways to think about — and talk about — this rapidly changing world: we will have to find another voice.

Maybe that’s the eleventh skill."

The Importance of Teaching Curiosity in our Modern World

As I wrote in this blog post:

We are heading towards a world where humans work with machines (including machine learning / artificial intelligence, robots and automated systems). Humans would need to create better insights and ask the right questions to create possible solutions for solving problems. But for doing, one needs to develop curiosity and the capacity to ask questions through habits, people, experiences, and resources in an augmented and automated world. That is our strong belief with Angela Dunn, @blogbrevity @HealthisCool. We are currently working on that. Stay tuned!

This is a take, that I am currently having and exploring to enable and support modern professionals to make the most of and learn from all kinds of experiences and opportunities to self-improve and self-develop.

What if we could enable people to develop their ceaseless curiosity like curious creatives do?

“He [Karl Lagarfeld]’s permanently filling himself with independent culture and establishment culture, so basically he knows everything, and he’s like a sampling machine.” Lady Amanda Harlech, Lagerfeld’s “muse,” concurs. “He said to me once, almost in a worried way, that he has to find out everything there is to know, read everything,” she says. “The curiosity is ceaseless.” - in the New Yorker

[Entire post — click on the title link to read it on the Synchrodipity blog, and to view additional images.]

***

You’re working on your goals, and your team’s goals. We can help you spring into action and develop a real plan that you can implement in a smart way, so you’ll start seeing results immediately, before you feel discouraged. If you feel that you’ve already gone off-track, we can help you get your focus, courage, and motivation back.

At  Creative Sage™, we often coach and mentor individual clients, as well as work teams, in the areas of change management, building resilience, making personal, career or organizational transitions — including to retirement, or an “encore career” — and facilitating development of leadership, creativity and collaboration capabilities. We also work with clients on work/life balance, focus and productivity issues.

We guide and mentor executives, entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, artists, and creative professionals of all generations, to help them more effectively implement transition processes, and to become more resilient in adjusting to rapid changes in the workplace — including learning effective coping techniques for handling failure, as well as success. We work with on-site and virtual teams.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss your situation. You can also call us at 1-510-845-5510 in San Francisco / Silicon Valley. Let’s talk! An initial exploratory phone conversation is free. When you talk with me, I promise that I’ll always LISTEN to you with open ears, mind and heart, to help you clarify your own unique path to a higher vista of success.

              ~Cathryn Hrudicka, Founder, CEO and Chief Imagination Officer of Creative Sage™, Executive Coach, Consultant, and Mentor.

***

[zipgrowth]

2017’s Ho-Hum, Unremarkable, But Too-Often Ignored Lessons in Education Technology

As someone who has taught high school history, led a school district, and researched the history of school reform along with the use of educational technologies over the past half-century, I found little that startled me in 2017 (with the exception for one event noted below). When it comes to digital tools in classrooms, it was the same o’, same o.’ Nothing remarkable in high-tech trends—more money, more devices, more hype.

Sure, I have seen a lot of successes and failures in school reform efforts. But I am neither a pessimist nor a naysayer. I am a tempered idealist who is cautiously optimistic about what U.S. public schools have done and still can do for children, the community, and the nation. Both the idealism and optimism—keep in mind the adjectives I used to modify the nouns—have a lot to do with what I have learned over the decades about school reform, especially when it comes to technology.

So for 2017, I offer no lessons that will shock, but ones distilled from my experience.

Lesson 1: When it comes to student use of classroom technologies, talk and action are both important. Differentiating between the two is crucial.

Anyone interested in improving schooling through digital tools has to distinguish between what the media hypes and what policies are actually adopted. There’s a difference between the promises of “personalized learning” and the policies that school leaders enact—whether through changing academic standards, testing tools, teacher accountability and technology implementation—to make them a reality.

Then, one has to further distinguish between the hyperbole and adopted policies and programs before determining what teachers actually do in their classroom lessons. The process is the same as parsing hyped ads from the unwrapped product in your hand.

These distinctions are crucial in making sense of what teachers do once the classroom door closes.

Lesson 2: Access to digital tools is not the same as what happens in daily classroom activities.

District purchases of hardware and software continue to go up. In 1984, there were 125 students for each computer; now the ratio is around 3:1 and in many places 1:1. Nothing startling here—the technology shopping spree began in the early years of this century and it continues.

Because this nearly ubiquitous access to new technologies has spread across urban, suburban, exurban, and rural school districts, too many pundits and promoters leap to the conclusion that all teachers integrate these digital tools into daily practice seamlessly. Anyone who regularly visits classrooms will see wild variation in the type and quality of lessons among teachers using digital technologies.

Yes, teachers are incorporating digital tools into daily practice. But—and there is always a “but”—even those who have thoroughly integrated new technologies into their lessons reveal both change and stability in their teaching.

There’s a difference between the promises of “personalized learning” and the policies that school leaders enact.

In 2016, I visited 41 elementary and secondary teachers in Silicon Valley who had a reputation for integrating technology into their daily lessons. They were hard working, sharp teachers who used digital tools as familiarly as paper and pencil. Devices and software were in the background, not foreground. The lessons they taught were expertly arranged with a variety of student activities. These teachers had, indeed, made changes in creating “playlists” of activities for students, pursuing problem-based units, and organizing the administrative tasks of teaching.

But I saw no fundamental or startling changes in the usual flow of lessons—setting goals, designing varied activities and groupings, eliciting student participation, assessing student understanding—that differed from earlier generations of sharp teachers. The lessons I observed were teacher-directed and post-observation interviews revealed continuity in how teachers have taught for decades.

Okay—there was one event that did startle me, and from which I will make a couple of predictions for 2018. That was the election of Donald Trump as President.

First, I do not believe that his tenure in the White House, or that of his Secretary of Education, will alter the nation’s direction in schooling. The Every Student Succeeds Act shifts policymaking from federal to state offices. Sure, there is much talk in D.C. about more school choice, charters, and vouchers—but much of it remains talk. Little change in what schools do or what happens in classrooms will occur.

What is disturbing is the President’s disregard for being informed, making judgments based on whim, tweeting racist statements and telling lies. (Politifact has documented 325 Trump statements that it judges mostly or entirely false.) In less than a year, these habits have already shaped a popular culture where “fake news,” “truthful hyperbole,” and “post-truth” are oft-used phrases.

Indirectly, the election of Donald Trump—and here is my second prediction—will spark district and school renewal in emphasizing critical thinking skills and helping teachers and students parse both mainstream and social media content for accuracy. Maybe the next generation will respect facts, think more logically, and be clearer thinkers and more intellectually curious than our current President.

2017’s Ho-Hum, Unremarkable, But Too-Often Ignored Lessons in Education Technology published first on http://ift.tt/2x05DG9

[christianpublishinghouse-blog]

Exactly why are we making other translations beyond the King James Version of 1611? The King James Version has been the primary translation of the Christian community for 400 years (1611-2011). There is no doubt that this Bible alone has affected the lives of hundreds of millions and has influenced the principles in Bible translation for the past four centuries.

Before we delve into what makes for a good translation, let us pause to consider the translation policy of the KJV translation committee. We can hardly talk about the KJV without looking at the translator William Tyndale (1494-1536), the man who published the first printed New Testament from the original language of Greek. In the face of much persecution, William Tyndale of England followed with his English translation of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament text, completing this while in exile on the continent of Europe in 1525.

Tyndale respected and treasured the Bible. However, in his days, the religious leaders insisted on keeping it in Latin, a language that had been dead for centuries. Therefore, with the purpose of making it available to his fellow citizens, Tyndale was determined to translate the Bible into English. While the idea of Bible translation being against the law may be unfamiliar to the modern mind, this was not the case in Tyndale’s day. He was educated at Oxford University and became an esteemed instructor at The Cambridge University. Because of his desire to bring the common man the Bible in English, he had to flee from his academic career, escaping the Continent. His life became one of a fugitive, but he managed to complete the New Testament and some of the Old Testament, before he was finally arrested, imprisoned for heresy, and strangled at the stake, with his body being burned afterward.

Tyndale’s work sparked a widespread translation project that produced a new revision every couple of years, or so it seemed. The Coverdale Bible of 1536, the Matthew’s Bible of 1537, the Great Bible of 1539, the Taverner’s Bible of 1539, the Geneva Bible of 1560 (went through 140 editions), the Edmund Becke’s Bible of 1549, the Bishop’s Bible of 1568, and the Rheims-Douay Bible of 1610. The King James Version is a revision of all these translations, as they too were of their predecessor, the Tyndale translation. The KJV translation committee was ordered to use the Bishop’s Bible as their foundation text and was not to alter it unless Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew, Cranmer or the Great Bible, and the Geneva agreed, and then they were to assume that reading. Thus, the King James Version is unquestionably 90 percent William Tyndale’s translation.

There is no other translation, which possesses more literary beauty than the King James Version. However, there are several reasons as to why there was a need to revise the King James Version. The first reason is the King James Versions textual basis, which is from the period of 1611. The Greek text behind the KJV New Testament is what is known as the Textus Receptus, a corrupt Greek text produced by a scholar in the 16th-century, Desiderius Erasmus. Concerning this text, Dr. Bruce Metzger wrote that it was “a handful of late and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts and in a dozen passages its reading is supported by no Greek witnesses.” (Metzger 2003, 106) While most of the corruptions are considered insignificant, others are significant, such as 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 John 5:7; John 7:53-8:11; and Mark 16:9-20. However, we cannot lay the blame at the feet of the translation committee of the KJV, for they did not have the textual evidence that we possess today.

The second reason is that the KJV comes from the 17th-century and contains many archaic words that either obscure the meaning or mislead its reader: “howbeit.” “thee,” “thy,” “thou,” “thine,” and “shambles.” An example of misleading can be found in the word “let,” which meant to “stop,” “hinder” or “restrain” in 1611, but today means “to allow” or “to permit.” Therefore, when the KJV says that Paul ‘let the great apostasy come into the church,’ it is completely misleading to the modern mind. In 1611 “let” meant that he ‘restrained or prevented the apostasy.’ (2 Thess. 2:7) The KJV at Mark 6:20 inform us “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him.” Actually, the Greek behind “observed him” means that Herod “kept him safe.”

The third reason is that the KJV contains translation errors. However, like the first reason, it is not the fault of the translators, as Hebrew and Greek were just resurfacing as subjects of serious study after the Dark Ages. The discovery of papyrus writings in Egypt, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has helped us better to understand the common (Koine) Greek of the first century C.E. These discoveries have shown that everyday words were not understood as well as had been thought. The KJV at Matthew 5:22 informs the reader “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council …” The ESV renders it, “whoever insults his brother will be liable (a term of abuse) to the council …” Scholar Walter C. Kaiser has said, “the actual insult mentioned by Jesus is the word ‘Raca’ as it stands in the KJV. The precise meaning of ‘Raca’ is disputed; it is probably an Aramaic word meaning something like ‘imbecile’, but was plainly regarded as a deadly insult.”

The fourth reason is that the KJV has over a thousand words in it that do not mean today what they meant in 1611. Words change over time, some even meaning the opposite. For example, the word “let,” as used in the King James Version, meant ‘to stop,’ ‘to prevent,’ or ‘to restrain’ in 1611. Today “let” means ‘to allow,’ ‘to permit,’ or ‘consent to. Thus, in 1611, when the KJV was published, 2 Thessalonians said that Paul “let” the great apostasy come into the church, which meant that Paul actually “stopped” or “restrained” the great apostasy from coming into the church. Now, those who do not know that in 1611 “let” meant, “prevent,” “stop,” and “restrain” in 1611, it was correctly translated. However, today, the English reader would be getting the opposite meaning from that 2 Thessalonians 2:7.

2 Thessalonians 2:7 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)

7 For the mystery[1] of lawlessness is already at work; but only until the one who is right now acting as a restraint is out of the way.

2 Thessalonians 2:7 King James Version (KJV)

7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

The translators that have come after the King James Version can draw much direction in what makes a worthy translation by considering the principles of translation that were followed in the production of the world’s most influential Bible. The translators endeavored to discover the corresponding English word for the actual original language word of Hebrew and Greek.

According to Alister McGrath, the translators felt obligated to . . .

Ensure that every word in the original was rendered by an English equivalent;

Make it clear when they added any words to make the sense clearer, or to lead to better English . . .

Follow the basic word order of the original wherever possible.[2]

There is any number of ways that each one of us may have been drawn into the field of Bible translation differences, the translation process, and textual criticism. It might be that some have been using the King James Version their entire life and with all of these new translations reading differently, especially in the New Testament, they began investigating why. Maybe it is the opposite, and we are using a more recent English translation such as the NASB, ESV, HCSB, LEB or the UASV. Then, maybe we have had a number of persons, who are commonly called the King James Version Only tell us that the KJV is based on the best and oldest Greek manuscripts, saying our translation is corrupt. Thus, in either of the above scenarios, we began by comparing the King James Version with some of the New Translations. We began to discover many differences between the new translations and the King James Version, which made us wonder, which is correct? We wonder, “Is the Bible that I have been using even accurate?” or “How can I know which Bible translation is most accurate?” Below are but a few examples out of hundreds of what would be discovered upon such an investigation. In our examples, we have chosen to compare the King James Version (KJV, 1611) against the Updated American Standard Version (UASV, 2016). Keep in mind that the 1901 ASV, the 1952 RSV, the 1995 NASB, and the 2001 ESV are going to read similar to the UASV because they too are literal translations based on the latest and best evidence. (some not as literal as the UASV, e.g., the ESV, RSV) The Textus Receptus (i.e., received text) is the name given to the printed Greek text of the New Testament, which served as the basis for the original German Luther Bible (1522), the translation of the New Testament into English by William Tyndale (1526), the King James Version (1611), and most other New Testament translations of the Reformation era. The critical Greek texts of the New Testament, which has served as the basis for modern day translations, including the ESV, are the Westcott and Hort Text of 1881, the United Bible Society (UBS5, 2014), and the Nestle-Aland (NA28, 2012).[3] Material within brackets [   ] means the reading was not in the original text.

Matthew 5:44

KJV: But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

UASV: But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

[do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;] The shorter reading in the ESV is found in the more trusted manuscripts from the fourth century while the longer reading of the KJV is found in manuscripts of the fifth century and beyond. The shorter reading is found in the citation of earlier church fathers while later church fathers cited the longer reading. It seems a copyist borrowed the above words from Luke 6:27-28, adding them to Matthew.

Matthew 6:13

KJV: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

UASV: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

[For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.] The manuscript evidence is against the longer reading being original. It likely came from the Didache (aka, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) which is a brief early Christian source on traditions of the church, dated by most scholars to the early second century.

Matthew 17:21

KJV: Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

UASV: The verse was omitted because of the substantial manuscript evidence led to the conclusion that this verse was not in the original text.

Bruce M. Metzger observes, “There is no satisfactory reason why the passage, if originally present in Matthew, should have been omitted in a wide variety of witnesses, and … copyists frequently inserted material derived from another Gospel …”[4]

Matthew 18:11

KJV: For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

UASV: The verse was omitted because it was absent from several important and diverse manuscripts, evidencing that this verse was not in the original text.

On this verse, Metzger writes, “There can be little doubt that the words [from the longer reading] are spurious here, being absent from the earliest witnesses representing several textual types (Alexandrian, Egyptian, Antiochian), and manifestly borrowed by copyists from Lk 19:10. The reason for the interpolation was apparently to provide a connection between ver. 10 and verses 12–14.”[5]

What Was a Pim?

1 Samuel 13:21 King James Version (KJV)

21 Yet they had a file [Heb., pim] for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads.

1 Samuel 13:21 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)

21 The charge was a pim[6] for the plowshares and for the mattocks, for the three-pronged fork, for the axes, and for fixing the oxgoad.

1 Samuel 13:21 English Standard Version (ESV)

21 and the charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares and for the mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening the axes and for setting the goads.

1 Samuel 13:21 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

21 The charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares, the mattocks, the forks, and the axes, and to fix the hoes.

What was a pim? It would not be uncovered until 1907 when archaeology discovered the first pim weight stone at the ancient city of Gezer. The translation, like the above King James Version, struggled in their translation of the word “pim.” Today, translators know that the pim was a weight measure of about 7.82 grams, or as the English Standard Version has it, “two-thirds of a shekel,” a common Hebrew unit of weight that the Philistines charged for sharpening the Israelites plowshares and mattocks.

Weight inscribed with the word pym Z. Radovan/www.BibleLandPictures.com[7]

What is the Mystery of Godliness?

1 Timothy 3:16 King James Version (KJV)

16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

1 Timothy 3:16 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)

16 And confessedly, great is the mystery of godliness:

He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

The word translated God was originally abbreviated ΘC (the nomen sacrum for θeός), which had originally looked like the Greek word OC (i.e., ὅς), the latter meaning “who.” Metzger makes the following observation, “The reading θeός arose either (a) accidentally, through the misreading of OC as ΘC, or (b) deliberately, either to supply a substantive for the following six verbs or, with less probability, to provide greater dogmatic precision.” (p. 574) Point (a) that it was an accidental misreading of OC as ΘC and that it was unlikely to be intentional, for doctrinal purposes, seems a bit dismissive. Nevertheless, this has long been the position of many scholars.

In fact, Johann Jakob Wettstein (1693-1754) noticed that ΘC, had originally looked like OC, but felt that a horizontal stroke had faintly shown through the other side of the uncial manuscript page, contributing to a later hand adding a horizontal line to OC, giving us the contraction ΘC (“God”). However, this author believes that Philip W. Comfort makes a valid point, when he writes, “It is difficult to imagine how several fourth-and-fifth-century scribes, who had seen thousands of nomina sacra, would have made this mistake. It is more likely that the changes were motivated by a desire to make the text say that it was “God” who was manifested in the flesh.” (P. W. Comfort 2008, 663) If we believe that doctrinal considerations were not behind the scribal changes, all we have to do is investigate what took place when it was understood that the actual reading was “He who was manifested in the flesh,” as opposed to “God was manifested in the flesh.” The battle in the nineteenth century was as though the loss of the reading in the Textus Receptus (θeός KJV) would undermine the doctrine of the Trinity. Doctrinal motivations have always played a role in the copying of the Bible, but the truth is these are actually few in number. Considering the number of manuscripts that were copied, if this were a major problem, we should see more.

Scribal Interpolations

1 John 5:7-8 (WHNU)

7 οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες

8 το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν

1 John 5:7-8 (TR)

7 οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τω ουρανω ο πατηρ ο λογος και το αγιον πνευμα και ουτοι οι τρεις εν εισιν

8 και τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τη γη το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν

1 John 5:7-8 (ESV)

7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.

1 John 5:7-8 (KJV)

7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

In verse 7 of 1 John 5, after μαρτυροῦντες (testify), the Textus Receptus adds, ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ Πατήρ, ὁ Λόγος, καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἔν εἰσι (in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one). In verse 8, the Textus Receptus has καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ (And there are three that bear witness in earth). There is no doubt that these words are an interpolation into the text, which textual scholarship has long known.

These additional words are missing from every Greek manuscript except eight, the earliest being from the tenth century. Metzger offers that these eight

After μαρτυροῦντες, the Textus Receptus adds the following: ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ Πατήρ, ὁ Λόγος, καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἔν εἰσι. (8) καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ. That these words are spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is certain in the light of the following considerations. “Contain the passage in what appears to be a translation from a late recension of the Latin Vulgate. Four of the eight manuscripts contain the passage as a variant reading written in the margin as a later addition to the manuscript.” (TCGNT, 649)

In addition, the added words were not quoted by any of the Greek Fathers. Certainly, had they been aware of these words, there is little doubt that they would have referenced them repeatedly in the fourth century Trinitarian debates. Metzger tells us that “Its first appearance in Greek is in a Greek version of the (Latin) Acts of the Lateran Council in 1215.” (TCGNT, 649)

The interpolation is also missing from all the manuscripts of the ancient versions, with the exception of the Latin (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Slavonic). However, it is not found in the Old Latin in its earliest form (Tertullian Cyprian Augustine). Moreover, it is not present in “the Vulgate (b) as issued by Jerome (codex Fuldensis [copied a.d.541–46] and codex Amiatinus [copied before a.d. 716]) or (c) as revised by Alcuin (first hand of codex Vallicellianus [ninth century]).” (TCGNT, 649)

This interpolation had its beginning in Latin, in the treatise Liber Apologetics, which was written by the Spanish heretic Priscillian (d. c. 385), bishop of Ávila, or his follower, Bishop Instantius. Metzger writes, “Apparently the gloss arose when the original passage was understood to symbolize the Trinity (through the mention of three witnesses: the Spirit, the water, and the blood), an interpretation that may have been written first as a marginal note that afterwards found its way into the text. In the fifth century the gloss was quoted by Latin Fathers in North Africa and Italy as part of the text of the Epistle, and from the sixth century onwards it is found more and more frequently in manuscripts of the Old Latin and of the Vulgate.” (TCGNT, 649)

Think about it, if these interpolations were original, there would be no reason to remove them, and they would be found in our earliest and best manuscripts, as well as hundreds of years of copying. Moreover, there would be no reason for their being missing from the versions either. Lastly, the interpolation also interrupts the sense.

Both a Science and an Art

We said at the outset that New Testament textual criticism is both a science and an art. Throughout almost all of this publication, we have used the science aspect, in that we have spoken of and applied many of the rules and principles. However, we will offer one verse here where the art aspect comes into play; we must not be rigid in our application of the rules and principles, meaning that we must be balanced.

Mark 1:41 (TR WHNU)

σπλαγχνισθεις εκτεινας την χειρα αυτου ηψατο

(א A B C L W f1,13 33 565 700 syr cop Diatessaron)

Mark 1:41 (LEB NEB REB)

οργισθεις εκτεινας την χειρα αυτου ηψατο

(D a, d, ff2)

Mark 1:41 (NASB)

41 Moved with compassion [splanchnon], Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him

Mark 1:41 (LEB)

41 And becoming angry [orgistheis], he stretched out his hand and touched him

The reason that this text is considered difficult is because of one having to go against the grain of the textual principles: Which reading is it that the other reading(s) most likely came from? Well, it is certainly easy to see how “moved with anger” would have been changed to “move with pity.” In that case, the scribe would have been softening the reading. It is very difficult to understand why a scribe would be tempted to go from “move with pity” to “moved with anger.” On the other hand, the textual evidence for “moved with pity” is very weighty, while the textual evidence “moved with anger” has no real weight at all. Most persons who define textual criticism say, ‘it is an art and a science.’ What they mean is that it is a science in that there are rules and principles, like the ones above, and it is an art, because one needs to be balanced in the application of those rules and principles. The textual rule of which reading is it that the others came from is not to be rigidly applied; there are times that it does not apply, this being one of them.

First, the Western text D, which gives us the reading of “moved with anger,” is notorious for making “significant” changes to the text. Comfort and Metzger, as well as others,  offer a very real reason as to why the scribe may have chosen to do so. “He may have decided to make Jesus angry with the leper for wanting a miracle–in keeping with the tone of voice Jesus used in 1:43 when he sternly warned the leper.” (P. W. Comfort 2008, 98) However, as Comfort goes on to point out, this would have been a misunderstanding on the part of the scribe, because Jesus was not warning him about seeking a miracle, it was rather “a warning about keeping the miracle a secret.” Another motive for the scribe to alter the text to the harder reading is because he felt the man was slow to believe that Jesus was serious about healing him (v. 40) In addition, why would the scribes soften the text here from “move with anger” to “moved with pity,” but not do the same at Mark 3:12 and 10:14?

Desiderius Erasmus and the Greek Text

I WOULD have these words translated into all languages, so that not only Scots and Irish, but Turks and Saracens too might read them . . . I long for the ploughboy to sing them to himself as he follows his plough, the weaver to hum them to the tune of his shuttle, the traveler to beguile with them the dullness of his journey. (Clayton 2006, 230)

Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus penned those words in the early part of the 16th century. Like his English counterpart, William Tyndale, it was his greatest desire that God’s Word be widely translated and that even the plowboy would have access to it.

Much time has passed since the Reformation, and 98 percent of the world we live in today has access to the Bible. There is little wonder that the Bible has become the bestseller of all time. It has influenced men from all walks of life to fight for freedom and truth. This is especially true during the Reformation of Europe throughout the 16th century. These leading men were of great faith, courage, and strength, such as Martin Luther, William Tyndale, while others, like Erasmus, was more subtle in the change that he produced. Thus, it has been said of the Reformation that Martin Luther only opened the door to it after Erasmus picked the lock.

There is not one historian of the period, who would deny that Erasmus was a great scholar. Remarking on his character, the Catholic Encyclopedia says: “He had an unequalled talent for form, great journalistic gifts, a surpassing power of expression: for strong and moving discourse, keen irony, and covert sarcasm, he was unsurpassed.” (Vol. 5, p. 514) Consequently, when Erasmus went to see Sir Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England, just before Erasmus made himself known, More was so impressed with his exchange that he shortly said: “You are either Erasmus or the Devil.”

The wit of Erasmus was evidenced in a response that he gave to Frederick, elector of Saxony, who asked him what he thought about Martin Luther. Erasmus retorted, “Luther has committed two blunders; he has ventured to touch the crown of the pope and the bellies of the monks.” (Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature: Vol. 3 – p, 279) However, we must ask what type of influence did the Bible have on Erasmus and, in turn, what did he do to affect its future? First, let us look at the early years of Erasmus’ life.

Erasmus’ Early Life

He was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1466. He was not a happy boy living in a home as the illegitimate son of a Dutch priest. He was faced with the double tragedy of his mother’s death at seventeen, and his father shortly after that. His guardians ignored his desire to enter the university; rather they sent him to the Augustinian monastery of Steyn. Erasmus gained a vast knowledge of the Latin language, the classic as well as the Church Fathers. In time, this type of life was so detestable to him; he jumped on the opportunity, at the age of twenty-six, to become secretary to the bishop of Cambrai, Henry of Bergen, in France. This afforded him his chance to enter university studies in Paris. However, he was a sickly man, always ill, suffering from poor health throughout his entire life.

It was in 1499 that Erasmus was invited to visit England. It was here that he met Thomas More, John Colet and other theologians in London, which fortified his resolution to apply himself to Biblical studies. In order to understand the Bible’s message better, he applied himself more fully in his study of Greek, soon being able to teach it to others. It was around this time that Erasmus penned a treatise entitled Handbook of the Christian Soldier, in which he advised the young Christian to study the Bible, saying: “There is nothing that you can believe with greater certitude than what you read in these writings.” (Erasmus and Dolan 1983, 37)

While trying to escape the plague, make a living in an economy that had bottomed worse than our 20th-century Great Depression, Erasmus found himself at Louvain, Belgium, in 1504. It was here that he fell in love with the study of textual criticism while visiting the Praemonstratensian Abbey of Parc near Louvain. Within the library, Erasmus discovered a manuscript of Italian scholar Lorenzo Valla: Annotations on the New Testament. Textual criticism is an art and science that studies manuscripts, evaluating internal and external evidence, especially of the Bible or works of literature, in order to determine which readings are the original or most authentic. Erasmus had commissioned himself toward the task of restoring the original text of the Greek New Testament.

Erasmus moved on to Italy and subsequently pushed on to England once again. It is this trip that brought to mind his original meeting with Thomas More, meditating on the origin of More’s name (moros, Greek for “a fool”); he penned a write or satire, which he called Praise of Folly. In this work, Erasmus takes the abstract quality “folly” as being a human being, and pictured it as encroaching in all aspects of life, but nowhere is folly more in obvious than amid the theologians and clergy. This is his subtle way of exposing the abuses of the clergy. It is these abuses that had brought on the Reformation, which was now festering. “As to the popes,” he wrote, “if they claim to be the successors of the Apostles, they should consider that the same things are required of them as were practiced by their predecessors.” Instead of doing this, he perceived, they believe that “to teach the people is too laborious; to interpret the scripture is to invade the prerogative of the schoolmen; to pray is too idle.” There is little wonder that it was said of Erasmus that he had “a surpassing power of expression”! (Nichols 2006, Vol. 2, 6)

The First Greek Text

While teaching Greek at Cambridge University in England, Erasmus continued with his work of revising the text of the Greek New Testament. One of his friends, Martin Dorpius, attempted to persuade him that the Latin did not need to be corrected from the Greek. Dorpius makes the same error in thinking that the “King James Only” people make, arguing: “For is it likely that the whole Catholic Church would have erred for so many centuries, seeing that she has always used and sanctioned this translation? Is it probable that so many holy fathers, so many consummate scholars would have longed to convey a warning to a friend?”  (Campbell 1949, 71) Thomas More joined Erasmus in replying to these arguments, making the point that the importance lies within having an accurate text in the original languages.

In Basel, Switzerland, Erasmus was about to be hassled by the printer Johannes Froben. Froben was alerted that Cardinal Ximenes of Toledo, Spain, had been putting together a Greek and Latin Testament in 1514. However, he was delaying publication until he had the whole Bible completed. The first printed Greek critical text would have set the standard, with the other being all but ignored. Erasmus published his first edition in 1516, while the Complutensian Polyglot (many languages) was not issued until 1522.

The fact that Erasmus was rushed to no end resulted in a Greek text that contained hundreds of typographical errors alone.[8] Textual scholar Scrivener once stated: ‘[It] is in that respect the most faulty book I know,’ (Scrivener 1894, 185) This comment does not even take into consideration the blatant interpolations (insert readings) into the text that were not part of the original. Erasmus was not lost to the typographical errors, which corrected a good many in later editions. This did not include the textual errors. It was his second edition of 1519 that was used by Martin Luther in his German translation and William Tyndale’s English translation. This is exactly what Erasmus wanted, writing the following in that editions preface: “I would have these words translated into all languages. . . . I long for the ploughboy to sing them to himself as he follows his plough.”

Sadly, the continuous reproduction of this debased Greek New Testament, gave rise to it becoming the standard, being called the Textus Receptus (Received Text), taking over 400 years before it was dethroned by the critical Text of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort in 1881. Regardless of its imperfection, the Erasmus critical edition began the all-important work of textual criticism, which has only brought about a better critical text, as well as more accurate Bible translations.

As was true with many other early Bibles in the early days of the Reformation, it had its detractors. Like the Geneva Bible, but on a much tamer note, Erasmus was critical of the clergy in his notes. For instance, the text of Matthew 16:18, which says, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” (Douay) Very plainly, he rejects the idea that this text is applied to primacy Peter, and that the pope is a successor of such. Imagine writing such a thing in the very edition you are going to dedicate to the pope! We can certainly see why Erasmus’ works were prohibited, even in the universities.

Erasmus was not only concerned with ascertaining the original words; he was just as concerned with achieving an accurate understanding of those words. In 1519, he penned Principles of True Theology (shortened to The Ratio). Herein he introduces his principles for Bible study, his interpretation rules. Among them is the thought of never taking a quotation out of its context nor out of the line of thought of its author. Erasmus saw the Bible as a whole work by one author, and it should interpret itself.

Erasmus Contrasted With Luther

Erasmus penned a treatise called Familiar Colloquies in 1518, where again he was exposing the corruptions on the Church and the monasteries. Just one year earlier, in 1517, Martin Luther had nailed his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, denouncing the indulgences, the scandal that had rocked numerous countries. Many folks were likely thinking that these two could bring change and reform. This was not going to be a team effort, though, as they both were at opposite ends of the spectrum on how to bring this reform about. Luther would come to condemn Erasmus, because he was viewed as being too moderate, seeking to make change peacefully within the Church. Many have viewed it as Erasmus thinking and writing, while Luther appeared to go beyond that with his actions.

The seemingly small bond they may have shared (by way of their writings against the Church establishment), was torn down the middle in 1524 when Erasmus penned the essay On the Freedom of the Will. Luther believed that salvation results from “justification by faith alone” (Latin, sola fide) and not from priestly absolution or works of penance. In fact, Luther was so adamant on his belief of “justification by faith alone” that in his Bible translation, he added the word “alone” to Romans 3:28. What Luther failed to understand was that Paul was writing about the works of the Mosaic Law. (Romans 3:19, 20, 28) Thus, Luther denied the notion that man possesses a free will. However, Erasmus would not accept such faulty reasoning, in that it would make God unjust because this would suggest that man would be unable to act in such a way as to affect his salvation.

As the Reformation was growing throughout Europe, Erasmus saw complaints from both sides. Many of the religious leaders who supported the reform movement chose to leave the Catholic Church. While they could not predict the result of their decision, they moved forward, many ending in death. This would not be true of Erasmus though, for he withdrew from the debate, yet he did refuse to be made cardinal. His approach was to try to appease both sides. Thus, Rome saw his writings as being that of a heretic, prohibiting them, while the reformers denounced him as refusing to risk his life for the cause. Here was a man, emotionally broken over criticism, but in fear of rocking the boat with Rome, so he cautiously sat on the sideline.

The affairs of Erasmus to the Reformation can be summarized as follows: “He was a reformer until the Reformation became a fearful reality; a jester at the bulwarks of the papacy until they began to give way; a propagator of the Scriptures until men betook themselves to the study and the application of them; depreciating the mere outward forms of religion until they had come to be estimated at their real value; in short, a learned, ingenious, benevolent, amiable, timid, irresolute man, who, bearing the responsibility, resigned to others the glory of rescuing the human mind from the bondage of a thousand years. The distance between his career and that of Luther was therefore continually enlarging, until they at length moved in opposite directions, and met each other with mutual animosity.”— (McClintock and Strong 1894, 278).

The greatest gain from the Reformation is that the common person can now hold God’s Word in his hand. In fact, the Englishperson has over 100 different translations from which to choose. From these 16th-century life and death struggles, in which Erasmus shared, there has materialized dependable and accurate Bible translations. Consequently, the ‘plowboy’ of 98 percent of the world can pick up his Bible, or at least part of it.

The Textus Receptus

The Dark Ages (5th to 15th centuries C.E.), was a time when the Church had the Bible locked up in the Latin language, and scholarship and learning were nearly nonexistent. However, with the birth of the Morning Star of the Reformation, John Wycliffe (1328-1384), and more officially in the 16th-century Reformation, and the invention of the printing press in 1455, the restraints were loosened, and there was a rebirth of interest in the Greek language. Moreover, with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks 1453 C. E., many Greek scholars and their manuscripts were scattered abroad, resulting in a revival of Greek in the Western citadels of learning.

About fifty years later, or at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, Spain, a man of rare capability and honor, invited foremost scholars of his land to his university at Alcala to produce a multiple-language Bible—not for the common people, but for the educated. The outcome would be the Polyglot, named Complutensian corresponding to the Latin of Alcala. This would be a Bible of six large volumes, beautifully bound, containing the Old Testament in four languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin) and the New Testament in two (Greek and Latin). For the Greek New Testament, these scholars had only a few manuscripts available to them, and those of late origin. One may wonder why this was the case when they were supposed to have access to the Vatican library. This Bible was completed in 1514, providing the first printed Greek New Testament, but did not receive approval by the pope to be published until 1520 and was not released to the public until 1522.

Froben, a printer in Basel, Switzerland became aware of the completion of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible and of its pending consent by the pope to be published. Immediately, he saw a prospect of making profits. He at once sent word to the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536), who was the foremost European scholar of the day and whose works he had published in Latin, beseeching him to hurry through a Greek New Testament text. In an attempt to bring the first published Greek text to completion, Erasmus was only able to locate, in July of 1515, a few late cursive manuscripts for collating and preparing his text. It would go to press in October of 1515 and would be completed by March of 1516. In fact, Erasmus was in such a hurried mode he rushed the manuscript containing the Gospels to the printer without first editing it, making such changes, as he felt was necessary on the proof sheets. Because of this great rush job, this work also contained hundreds of typographical errors. Erasmus himself admitted this in its preface that it was “rushed through rather than edited.” Bruce Metzger referred to the Erasmian text as a “debased form of the Greek testament.” (B. M. Metzger 1964, 1968, 1992, 103)

Needless to say, Erasmus was moved to produce an improved text in four succeeding editions of 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. Erasmus’ editions of the Greek text, we are informed, ended up being an excellent achievement, a literary sensation. They were inexpensive, and the first two editions totaled 3,300 copies, in comparison to the 600 copies of the large and expensive six-volume Polyglot Bible. In the preface of his first edition, Erasmus stated, “I vehemently dissent from those who would not have private persons read the Holy Scriptures, nor have them translated into the vulgar tongues.” (Baer 2007, 268)

Except for everyday practical consideration, the editions of Erasmus had little to vouch for them, for he had access to five (some say eight) Greek manuscripts of reasonably late origin and none of these were of the whole Greek New Testament. Rather, these comprised one or more sections into which the Greek texts were normally divided: (1) the Gospels; (2) Acts and the general epistles (James through Jude); (3) the letters of Paul; (4) Revelation. In fact, of the 5,750 Greek New Testament manuscripts that we now have, only about fifty are complete.

Consequently, Erasmus had but one copy of Revelation (twelfth-century). Since it was incomplete, he merely retranslated the missing last six verses of the book from the Latin Vulgate back into Greek. He even frequently brought his Greek text in line with the Latin Vulgate; this is why there are some twenty readings in his Greek text not found in any other Greek manuscript.

Martin Luther would use Erasmus’ 1519 edition for his German translation, and William Tyndale would use the 1522 edition for his English translation. Erasmus’ editions were also the foundation for further Greek editions of the New Testament by others. For instance, the four published by Robert Estienne (Stephanus, 1503-59). According to Bruce Metzger, the third of these, published by Stephanus, in 1550, became the Textus Receptus or Received Text of Britain and the basis of the King James Version. This took place through Theodore de Beza (1519-1605), whose work was based on the corrupted third and fourth editions of the Erasmian text. Beza would produce nine editions of the Greek text, four being independent (1565, 1589, 1588-9, 1598), and the other five smaller reprints. It would be two of Beza’s editions, that of 1589 and 1598, which would become the English Received Text.

Beza’s Greek edition of the New Testament did not even differ as much as might be expected from those of Erasmus. Why do I say, as might be expected? Beza was a friend of the Protestant reformer, John Calvin, succeeding him at Geneva, and was also a well-known classical and biblical scholar. In addition, Beza possessed two important Greek manuscripts of the fourth and fifth century, the D and Dp (also known as D2), the former of which contains most of the Gospels and Acts, as well as a fragment of 3 John and the latter containing the Pauline epistles. The Dutch Elzevir editions followed next, which were virtually identical to those of the Erasmian-influenced Beza text. It was in the second of seven of these, published in 1633 that there appeared the statement in the preface (in Latin): “You therefore now have the text accepted by everybody, in which we give nothing changed or corrupted.” On the continent, this edition became the Textus Receptus or the Received Text. It seems that this success was in no small way due to the beauty and useful size of the Elzevir editions.

The Restoration Period

For the next 250-years, up until 1881, textual scholarship was enslaved to the Erasmian-oriented Received Text. As these textual scholars[9] became familiar with older and more accurate manuscripts and observed the flaws in the Received Text, instead of changing the text, they would publish their findings in introductions, margins, and footnotes of their editions. In 1734, J. A. Bengle of Tübingen, Germany, made an apology for again printing the Received Text, doing so only “because he could not publish a text of his own. Neither the publisher nor the public would have stood for it,” he complained. (Robertson 1925, 25)

The first one to break free from this enslavement to the Textus Receptus, in the text itself, was Bible scholar J. J. Griesbach (1745-1812). His principal edition comes to us in three volumes, the first in Halle in 1775-7, the second in Halle and London in 1796-1806, and the third at Leipzig in 1803-7. However, Griesbach did not fully break away from the Textus Receptus. Nevertheless, Griesbach is the real starting point in the development of classifying the manuscripts into families, setting down principles and rules for establishing the original reading, and using symbols to indicate the degree of certainty as to its being the original reading.

Karl Lachmann (1793-1851) was the first one fully to get out from under the influence of the Textus Receptus. He was a professor of ancient classical languages at Berlin University. In 1831, he published his edition of the Greek New Testament without any regard to the Textus Receptus. As Samuel MacAuley Jackson expressed it: Lachmann “was the first to found a text wholly on ancient evidence; and his editions, to which his eminent reputation as a critic gave wide currency, especially in Germany, did much toward breaking down the superstitious reverence for the textus receptus.”  Bruce Metzger too had harsh words for the era of the Textus Receptus as well:

So superstitious has been the reverence accorded the Textus Receptus that in some cases attempts to criticize it or emend it have been regarded as akin to sacrilege. Yet its textual basis is essentially a handful of late and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts, and in a dozen passages, its reading is supported by no known Greek witnesses. (B. M. Metzger 1964, 1968, 1992, 106)

Subsequent to Lachmann came Friedrich Constantine von Tischendorf (1815-74), best known for his discovery of the famed fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus Manuscript, the only Greek uncial manuscript containing the complete Greek New Testament. Tischendorf went further than any other textual scholar to edit and made the evidence accessible contained in leading as well as less important uncial manuscripts. Throughout the time, Tischendorf was making his treasured contributions to the field of textual criticism in Germany; one Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (1813-75) in England made other valued contributions. Aside from other things, he was able to establish his concept of “Comparative Criticism.” This establishes that the age of a text, like Vaticanus 1209, may not necessarily be that of its manuscript, which was copied in 350 C.E., as it may be a faithful copy of an earlier text, like the second-century and P75. Both Tischendorf and Tregelles were determined defenders of divine inspiration of the Scriptures, which likely had much to do with the productivity of their labors. If you have an opportunity to read about the lengths that Tischendorf went to in his discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, you will be moved by his steadfastness and love for God’s Word.

The Climax of the Restored Text

The critical text of Westcott and Hort of 1881 has been commended by the leading textual scholars over the last one hundred and forty years, and still, stands as the standard. Numerous additional critical editions of the Greek text came after Westcott and Hort: Richard F. Weymouth (1886), Bernhard Weiss (1894–1900); the British and Foreign Bible Society (1904, 1958), Alexander Souter (1910), Hermann von Soden (1911–1913); and Eberhard Nestle’s Greek text, the Novum Testamentum Graece, published in 1898 by the Württemberg Bible Society, Stuttgart, Germany. The Nestle in twelve editions (1898–1923) to be then taken over by his son, Erwin Nestle (13th–20th editions, 1927–1950), followed by Kurt Aland (21st–25th editions, 1952–1963) and lastly, it was coedited by Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland (26th–27th editions, 1979–1993).

Many of the above scholars gave their entire life to God and the Greek text. Each of these could have an entire book penned about them and their work alone. The amount of work they accomplished before the era of computers is nothing short of astonishing. Rightly, the preceding history should serve to strengthen our faith in the authenticity and general integrity of the Greek New Testament. Unlike Bart D. Ehrman, men like Professor Kenyon have been moved to say that the Greek New Testament has, “come down to us substantially as they were written.” And all this is especially true of the critical scholarship of the almost two hundred years since the days of Karl Lachmann upon which all today can feel certain that what they hold in their hands is a mirror reflection of the Word of God that was penned in twenty-seven books, some two thousand years ago.

[1] Mystery; Secret: (Gr. mystērion) A sacred divine mystery or secret doctrine that lies with God alone, which is withheld from both the angelic body and humans, until the time he determines that it is to be revealed, and to those to whom he chooses to make it known.–Mark 4:11; Rom. 11:25; 16:25; 1 Cor. 2:1; 4:1; 13:2; 14:2; 15:51; Eph. 1:9; 6:19; Col. 1:26; 2:2; 2 Thess. 2:7; 1 Tim. 3:9; Rev. 17:5.

[2] McGrath, Alister. In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture. New York: Anchor, 2002, p. 250.

[3] The primary difference between the UBS5 and the NA28 is that translators primarily use the latter, while textual scholars primarily use the former.

[4] Bruce Manning Metzger, United Bible Societies, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition a Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th Rev. Ed.) (London; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 35.

[5] IBID, 36

[6] I.e. An ancient weight, approximately two-thirds of a shekel.

[7] http://biblia.com/books/zibbcot02/1Sa14.1-14

[8] In fact, his copy of Revelation being incomplete, Erasmus simply retranslated the missing verses from the Latin Vulgate back into Greek.

[9] Brian Walton (1600-61), Dr. John Fell (1625-86), John Mill 1645-1707), Dr. Edward Wells (1667-1727, Richard Bentley (1662-1742), John Albert Bengel (1687-1752), Johann Jacob Wettstein (1693-1754), Johann Salomo Semler (1725-91), William Bowyer Jr. (1699-1777), Edward Harwood (1729-94), and Isaiah Thomas Jr. (1749-1831)

The Reign of the King James Version Exactly why are we making other translations beyond the King James Version of 1611? The King James Version has been the primary translation of the Christian community for 400 years (1611-2011).

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Exactly why are we making other translations beyond the King James Version of 1611? The King James Version has been the primary translation of the Christian community for 400 years (1611-2011). There is no doubt that this Bible alone has affected the lives of hundreds of millions and has influenced the principles in Bible translation for the past four centuries.

Before we delve into what makes for a good translation, let us pause to consider the translation policy of the KJV translation committee. We can hardly talk about the KJV without looking at the translator William Tyndale (1494-1536), the man who published the first printed New Testament from the original language of Greek. In the face of much persecution, William Tyndale of England followed with his English translation of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament text, completing this while in exile on the continent of Europe in 1525.

Tyndale respected and treasured the Bible. However, in his days, the religious leaders insisted on keeping it in Latin, a language that had been dead for centuries. Therefore, with the purpose of making it available to his fellow citizens, Tyndale was determined to translate the Bible into English. While the idea of Bible translation being against the law may be unfamiliar to the modern mind, this was not the case in Tyndale’s day. He was educated at Oxford University and became an esteemed instructor at The Cambridge University. Because of his desire to bring the common man the Bible in English, he had to flee from his academic career, escaping the Continent. His life became one of a fugitive, but he managed to complete the New Testament and some of the Old Testament, before he was finally arrested, imprisoned for heresy, and strangled at the stake, with his body being burned afterward.

Tyndale’s work sparked a widespread translation project that produced a new revision every couple of years, or so it seemed. The Coverdale Bible of 1536, the Matthew’s Bible of 1537, the Great Bible of 1539, the Taverner’s Bible of 1539, the Geneva Bible of 1560 (went through 140 editions), the Edmund Becke’s Bible of 1549, the Bishop’s Bible of 1568, and the Rheims-Douay Bible of 1610. The King James Version is a revision of all these translations, as they too were of their predecessor, the Tyndale translation. The KJV translation committee was ordered to use the Bishop’s Bible as their foundation text and was not to alter it unless Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew, Cranmer or the Great Bible, and the Geneva agreed, and then they were to assume that reading. Thus, the King James Version is unquestionably 90 percent William Tyndale’s translation.

There is no other translation, which possesses more literary beauty than the King James Version. However, there are several reasons as to why there was a need to revise the King James Version. The first reason is the King James Versions textual basis, which is from the period of 1611. The Greek text behind the KJV New Testament is what is known as the Textus Receptus, a corrupt Greek text produced by a scholar in the 16th-century, Desiderius Erasmus. Concerning this text, Dr. Bruce Metzger wrote that it was “a handful of late and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts and in a dozen passages its reading is supported by no Greek witnesses.” (Metzger 2003, 106) While most of the corruptions are considered insignificant, others are significant, such as 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 John 5:7; John 7:53-8:11; and Mark 16:9-20. However, we cannot lay the blame at the feet of the translation committee of the KJV, for they did not have the textual evidence that we possess today.

The second reason is that the KJV comes from the 17th-century and contains many archaic words that either obscure the meaning or mislead its reader: “howbeit.” “thee,” “thy,” “thou,” “thine,” and “shambles.” An example of misleading can be found in the word “let,” which meant to “stop,” “hinder” or “restrain” in 1611, but today means “to allow” or “to permit.” Therefore, when the KJV says that Paul ‘let the great apostasy come into the church,’ it is completely misleading to the modern mind. In 1611 “let” meant that he ‘restrained or prevented the apostasy.’ (2 Thess. 2:7) The KJV at Mark 6:20 inform us “Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him.” Actually, the Greek behind “observed him” means that Herod “kept him safe.”

The third reason is that the KJV contains translation errors. However, like the first reason, it is not the fault of the translators, as Hebrew and Greek were just resurfacing as subjects of serious study after the Dark Ages. The discovery of papyrus writings in Egypt, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, has helped us better to understand the common (Koine) Greek of the first century C.E. These discoveries have shown that everyday words were not understood as well as had been thought. The KJV at Matthew 5:22 informs the reader “whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council …” The ESV renders it, “whoever insults his brother will be liable (a term of abuse) to the council …” Scholar Walter C. Kaiser has said, “the actual insult mentioned by Jesus is the word ‘Raca’ as it stands in the KJV. The precise meaning of ‘Raca’ is disputed; it is probably an Aramaic word meaning something like ‘imbecile’, but was plainly regarded as a deadly insult.”

The fourth reason is that the KJV has over a thousand words in it that do not mean today what they meant in 1611. Words change over time, some even meaning the opposite. For example, the word “let,” as used in the King James Version, meant ‘to stop,’ ‘to prevent,’ or ‘to restrain’ in 1611. Today “let” means ‘to allow,’ ‘to permit,’ or ‘consent to. Thus, in 1611, when the KJV was published, 2 Thessalonians said that Paul “let” the great apostasy come into the church, which meant that Paul actually “stopped” or “restrained” the great apostasy from coming into the church. Now, those who do not know that in 1611 “let” meant, “prevent,” “stop,” and “restrain” in 1611, it was correctly translated. However, today, the English reader would be getting the opposite meaning from that 2 Thessalonians 2:7.

2 Thessalonians 2:7 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)

7 For the mystery[1] of lawlessness is already at work; but only until the one who is right now acting as a restraint is out of the way.

2 Thessalonians 2:7 King James Version (KJV)

7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.

The translators that have come after the King James Version can draw much direction in what makes a worthy translation by considering the principles of translation that were followed in the production of the world’s most influential Bible. The translators endeavored to discover the corresponding English word for the actual original language word of Hebrew and Greek.

According to Alister McGrath, the translators felt obligated to . . .

Ensure that every word in the original was rendered by an English equivalent;

Make it clear when they added any words to make the sense clearer, or to lead to better English . . .

Follow the basic word order of the original wherever possible.[2]

There is any number of ways that each one of us may have been drawn into the field of Bible translation differences, the translation process, and textual criticism. It might be that some have been using the King James Version their entire life and with all of these new translations reading differently, especially in the New Testament, they began investigating why. Maybe it is the opposite, and we are using a more recent English translation such as the NASB, ESV, HCSB, LEB or the UASV. Then, maybe we have had a number of persons, who are commonly called the King James Version Only tell us that the KJV is based on the best and oldest Greek manuscripts, saying our translation is corrupt. Thus, in either of the above scenarios, we began by comparing the King James Version with some of the New Translations. We began to discover many differences between the new translations and the King James Version, which made us wonder, which is correct? We wonder, “Is the Bible that I have been using even accurate?” or “How can I know which Bible translation is most accurate?” Below are but a few examples out of hundreds of what would be discovered upon such an investigation. In our examples, we have chosen to compare the King James Version (KJV, 1611) against the Updated American Standard Version (UASV, 2016). Keep in mind that the 1901 ASV, the 1952 RSV, the 1995 NASB, and the 2001 ESV are going to read similar to the UASV because they too are literal translations based on the latest and best evidence. (some not as literal as the UASV, e.g., the ESV, RSV) The Textus Receptus (i.e., received text) is the name given to the printed Greek text of the New Testament, which served as the basis for the original German Luther Bible (1522), the translation of the New Testament into English by William Tyndale (1526), the King James Version (1611), and most other New Testament translations of the Reformation era. The critical Greek texts of the New Testament, which has served as the basis for modern day translations, including the ESV, are the Westcott and Hort Text of 1881, the United Bible Society (UBS5, 2014), and the Nestle-Aland (NA28, 2012).[3] Material within brackets [   ] means the reading was not in the original text.

Matthew 5:44

KJV: But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

UASV: But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

[do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;] The shorter reading in the ESV is found in the more trusted manuscripts from the fourth century while the longer reading of the KJV is found in manuscripts of the fifth century and beyond. The shorter reading is found in the citation of earlier church fathers while later church fathers cited the longer reading. It seems a copyist borrowed the above words from Luke 6:27-28, adding them to Matthew.

Matthew 6:13

KJV: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.

UASV: And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

[For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.] The manuscript evidence is against the longer reading being original. It likely came from the Didache (aka, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles) which is a brief early Christian source on traditions of the church, dated by most scholars to the early second century.

Matthew 17:21

KJV: Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

UASV: The verse was omitted because of the substantial manuscript evidence led to the conclusion that this verse was not in the original text.

Bruce M. Metzger observes, “There is no satisfactory reason why the passage, if originally present in Matthew, should have been omitted in a wide variety of witnesses, and … copyists frequently inserted material derived from another Gospel …”[4]

Matthew 18:11

KJV: For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.

UASV: The verse was omitted because it was absent from several important and diverse manuscripts, evidencing that this verse was not in the original text.

On this verse, Metzger writes, “There can be little doubt that the words [from the longer reading] are spurious here, being absent from the earliest witnesses representing several textual types (Alexandrian, Egyptian, Antiochian), and manifestly borrowed by copyists from Lk 19:10. The reason for the interpolation was apparently to provide a connection between ver. 10 and verses 12–14.”[5]

What Was a Pim?

1 Samuel 13:21 King James Version (KJV)

21 Yet they had a file [Heb., pim] for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads.

1 Samuel 13:21 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)

21 The charge was a pim[6] for the plowshares and for the mattocks, for the three-pronged fork, for the axes, and for fixing the oxgoad.

1 Samuel 13:21 English Standard Version (ESV)

21 and the charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares and for the mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening the axes and for setting the goads.

1 Samuel 13:21 New American Standard Bible (NASB)

21 The charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares, the mattocks, the forks, and the axes, and to fix the hoes.

What was a pim? It would not be uncovered until 1907 when archaeology discovered the first pim weight stone at the ancient city of Gezer. The translation, like the above King James Version, struggled in their translation of the word “pim.” Today, translators know that the pim was a weight measure of about 7.82 grams, or as the English Standard Version has it, “two-thirds of a shekel,” a common Hebrew unit of weight that the Philistines charged for sharpening the Israelites plowshares and mattocks.

Weight inscribed with the word pym Z. Radovan/www.BibleLandPictures.com[7]

What is the Mystery of Godliness?

1 Timothy 3:16 King James Version (KJV)

16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

  1 Timothy 3:16 Updated American Standard Version (UASV)

16 And confessedly, great is the mystery of godliness:

He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

The word translated God was originally abbreviated ΘC (the nomen sacrum for θeός), which had originally looked like the Greek word OC (i.e., ὅς), the latter meaning “who.” Metzger makes the following observation, “The reading θeός arose either (a) accidentally, through the misreading of OC as ΘC, or (b) deliberately, either to supply a substantive for the following six verbs or, with less probability, to provide greater dogmatic precision.” (p. 574) Point (a) that it was an accidental misreading of OC as ΘC and that it was unlikely to be intentional, for doctrinal purposes, seems a bit dismissive. Nevertheless, this has long been the position of many scholars.

In fact, Johann Jakob Wettstein (1693-1754) noticed that ΘC, had originally looked like OC, but felt that a horizontal stroke had faintly shown through the other side of the uncial manuscript page, contributing to a later hand adding a horizontal line to OC, giving us the contraction ΘC (“God”). However, this author believes that Philip W. Comfort makes a valid point, when he writes, “It is difficult to imagine how several fourth-and-fifth-century scribes, who had seen thousands of nomina sacra, would have made this mistake. It is more likely that the changes were motivated by a desire to make the text say that it was “God” who was manifested in the flesh.” (P. W. Comfort 2008, 663) If we believe that doctrinal considerations were not behind the scribal changes, all we have to do is investigate what took place when it was understood that the actual reading was “He who was manifested in the flesh,” as opposed to “God was manifested in the flesh.” The battle in the nineteenth century was as though the loss of the reading in the Textus Receptus (θeός KJV) would undermine the doctrine of the Trinity. Doctrinal motivations have always played a role in the copying of the Bible, but the truth is these are actually few in number. Considering the number of manuscripts that were copied, if this were a major problem, we should see more.

Scribal Interpolations

1 John 5:7-8 (WHNU)

7 οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες

8 το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν

1 John 5:7-8 (TR)

7 οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τω ουρανω ο πατηρ ο λογος και το αγιον πνευμα και ουτοι οι τρεις εν εισιν

8 και τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τη γη το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν

1 John 5:7-8 (ESV)

7 For there are three that testify: 8 the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.

1 John 5:7-8 (KJV)

7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.

8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.

In verse 7 of 1 John 5, after μαρτυροῦντες (testify), the Textus Receptus adds, ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ Πατήρ, ὁ Λόγος, καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἔν εἰσι (in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one). In verse 8, the Textus Receptus has καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ (And there are three that bear witness in earth). There is no doubt that these words are an interpolation into the text, which textual scholarship has long known.

These additional words are missing from every Greek manuscript except eight, the earliest being from the tenth century. Metzger offers that these eight

After μαρτυροῦντες, the Textus Receptus adds the following: ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, ὁ Πατήρ, ὁ Λόγος, καὶ τὸ Ἅγιον Πνεῦμα· καὶ οὗτοι οἱ τρεῖς ἔν εἰσι. (8) καὶ τρεῖς εἰσιν οἱ μαρτυροῦντες ἐν τῇ γῇ. That these words are spurious and have no right to stand in the New Testament is certain in the light of the following considerations. “Contain the passage in what appears to be a translation from a late recension of the Latin Vulgate. Four of the eight manuscripts contain the passage as a variant reading written in the margin as a later addition to the manuscript.” (TCGNT, 649)

In addition, the added words were not quoted by any of the Greek Fathers. Certainly, had they been aware of these words, there is little doubt that they would have referenced them repeatedly in the fourth century Trinitarian debates. Metzger tells us that “Its first appearance in Greek is in a Greek version of the (Latin) Acts of the Lateran Council in 1215.” (TCGNT, 649)

The interpolation is also missing from all the manuscripts of the ancient versions, with the exception of the Latin (Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Slavonic). However, it is not found in the Old Latin in its earliest form (Tertullian Cyprian Augustine). Moreover, it is not present in “the Vulgate (b) as issued by Jerome (codex Fuldensis [copied a.d.541–46] and codex Amiatinus [copied before a.d. 716]) or (c) as revised by Alcuin (first hand of codex Vallicellianus [ninth century]).” (TCGNT, 649)

This interpolation had its beginning in Latin, in the treatise Liber Apologetics, which was written by the Spanish heretic Priscillian (d. c. 385), bishop of Ávila, or his follower, Bishop Instantius. Metzger writes, “Apparently the gloss arose when the original passage was understood to symbolize the Trinity (through the mention of three witnesses: the Spirit, the water, and the blood), an interpretation that may have been written first as a marginal note that afterwards found its way into the text. In the fifth century the gloss was quoted by Latin Fathers in North Africa and Italy as part of the text of the Epistle, and from the sixth century onwards it is found more and more frequently in manuscripts of the Old Latin and of the Vulgate.” (TCGNT, 649)

Think about it, if these interpolations were original, there would be no reason to remove them, and they would be found in our earliest and best manuscripts, as well as hundreds of years of copying. Moreover, there would be no reason for their being missing from the versions either. Lastly, the interpolation also interrupts the sense.

Both a Science and an Art

We said at the outset that New Testament textual criticism is both a science and an art. Throughout almost all of this publication, we have used the science aspect, in that we have spoken of and applied many of the rules and principles. However, we will offer one verse here where the art aspect comes into play; we must not be rigid in our application of the rules and principles, meaning that we must be balanced.

Mark 1:41 (TR WHNU)

σπλαγχνισθεις εκτεινας την χειρα αυτου ηψατο

(א A B C L W f1,13 33 565 700 syr cop Diatessaron)

Mark 1:41 (LEB NEB REB)

οργισθεις εκτεινας την χειρα αυτου ηψατο

(D a, d, ff2)

Mark 1:41 (NASB)

41 Moved with compassion [splanchnon], Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him

Mark 1:41 (LEB)

41 And becoming angry [orgistheis], he stretched out his hand and touched him

The reason that this text is considered difficult is because of one having to go against the grain of the textual principles: Which reading is it that the other reading(s) most likely came from? Well, it is certainly easy to see how “moved with anger” would have been changed to “move with pity.” In that case, the scribe would have been softening the reading. It is very difficult to understand why a scribe would be tempted to go from “move with pity” to “moved with anger.” On the other hand, the textual evidence for “moved with pity” is very weighty, while the textual evidence “moved with anger” has no real weight at all. Most persons who define textual criticism say, ‘it is an art and a science.’ What they mean is that it is a science in that there are rules and principles, like the ones above, and it is an art, because one needs to be balanced in the application of those rules and principles. The textual rule of which reading is it that the others came from is not to be rigidly applied; there are times that it does not apply, this being one of them.

First, the Western text D, which gives us the reading of “moved with anger,” is notorious for making “significant” changes to the text. Comfort and Metzger, as well as others,  offer a very real reason as to why the scribe may have chosen to do so. “He may have decided to make Jesus angry with the leper for wanting a miracle–in keeping with the tone of voice Jesus used in 1:43 when he sternly warned the leper.” (P. W. Comfort 2008, 98) However, as Comfort goes on to point out, this would have been a misunderstanding on the part of the scribe, because Jesus was not warning him about seeking a miracle, it was rather “a warning about keeping the miracle a secret.” Another motive for the scribe to alter the text to the harder reading is because he felt the man was slow to believe that Jesus was serious about healing him (v. 40) In addition, why would the scribes soften the text here from “move with anger” to “moved with pity,” but not do the same at Mark 3:12 and 10:14?

Desiderius Erasmus and the Greek Text

I WOULD have these words translated into all languages, so that not only Scots and Irish, but Turks and Saracens too might read them . . . I long for the ploughboy to sing them to himself as he follows his plough, the weaver to hum them to the tune of his shuttle, the traveler to beguile with them the dullness of his journey. (Clayton 2006, 230)

Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus penned those words in the early part of the 16th century. Like his English counterpart, William Tyndale, it was his greatest desire that God’s Word be widely translated and that even the plowboy would have access to it.

Much time has passed since the Reformation, and 98 percent of the world we live in today has access to the Bible. There is little wonder that the Bible has become the bestseller of all time. It has influenced men from all walks of life to fight for freedom and truth. This is especially true during the Reformation of Europe throughout the 16th century. These leading men were of great faith, courage, and strength, such as Martin Luther, William Tyndale, while others, like Erasmus, was more subtle in the change that he produced. Thus, it has been said of the Reformation that Martin Luther only opened the door to it after Erasmus picked the lock.

There is not one historian of the period, who would deny that Erasmus was a great scholar. Remarking on his character, the Catholic Encyclopedia says: “He had an unequalled talent for form, great journalistic gifts, a surpassing power of expression: for strong and moving discourse, keen irony, and covert sarcasm, he was unsurpassed.” (Vol. 5, p. 514) Consequently, when Erasmus went to see Sir Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor of England, just before Erasmus made himself known, More was so impressed with his exchange that he shortly said: “You are either Erasmus or the Devil.”

The wit of Erasmus was evidenced in a response that he gave to Frederick, elector of Saxony, who asked him what he thought about Martin Luther. Erasmus retorted, “Luther has committed two blunders; he has ventured to touch the crown of the pope and the bellies of the monks.” (Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature: Vol. 3 – p, 279) However, we must ask what type of influence did the Bible have on Erasmus and, in turn, what did he do to affect its future? First, let us look at the early years of Erasmus’ life.

Erasmus’ Early Life

He was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 1466. He was not a happy boy living in a home as the illegitimate son of a Dutch priest. He was faced with the double tragedy of his mother’s death at seventeen, and his father shortly after that. His guardians ignored his desire to enter the university; rather they sent him to the Augustinian monastery of Steyn. Erasmus gained a vast knowledge of the Latin language, the classic as well as the Church Fathers. In time, this type of life was so detestable to him; he jumped on the opportunity, at the age of twenty-six, to become secretary to the bishop of Cambrai, Henry of Bergen, in France. This afforded him his chance to enter university studies in Paris. However, he was a sickly man, always ill, suffering from poor health throughout his entire life.

It was in 1499 that Erasmus was invited to visit England. It was here that he met Thomas More, John Colet and other theologians in London, which fortified his resolution to apply himself to Biblical studies. In order to understand the Bible’s message better, he applied himself more fully in his study of Greek, soon being able to teach it to others. It was around this time that Erasmus penned a treatise entitled Handbook of the Christian Soldier, in which he advised the young Christian to study the Bible, saying: “There is nothing that you can believe with greater certitude than what you read in these writings.” (Erasmus and Dolan 1983, 37)

While trying to escape the plague, make a living in an economy that had bottomed worse than our 20th-century Great Depression, Erasmus found himself at Louvain, Belgium, in 1504. It was here that he fell in love with the study of textual criticism while visiting the Praemonstratensian Abbey of Parc near Louvain. Within the library, Erasmus discovered a manuscript of Italian scholar Lorenzo Valla: Annotations on the New Testament. Textual criticism is an art and science that studies manuscripts, evaluating internal and external evidence, especially of the Bible or works of literature, in order to determine which readings are the original or most authentic. Erasmus had commissioned himself toward the task of restoring the original text of the Greek New Testament.

Erasmus moved on to Italy and subsequently pushed on to England once again. It is this trip that brought to mind his original meeting with Thomas More, meditating on the origin of More’s name (moros, Greek for “a fool”); he penned a write or satire, which he called Praise of Folly. In this work, Erasmus takes the abstract quality “folly” as being a human being, and pictured it as encroaching in all aspects of life, but nowhere is folly more in obvious than amid the theologians and clergy. This is his subtle way of exposing the abuses of the clergy. It is these abuses that had brought on the Reformation, which was now festering. “As to the popes,” he wrote, “if they claim to be the successors of the Apostles, they should consider that the same things are required of them as were practiced by their predecessors.” Instead of doing this, he perceived, they believe that “to teach the people is too laborious; to interpret the scripture is to invade the prerogative of the schoolmen; to pray is too idle.” There is little wonder that it was said of Erasmus that he had “a surpassing power of expression”! (Nichols 2006, Vol. 2, 6)

The First Greek Text

While teaching Greek at Cambridge University in England, Erasmus continued with his work of revising the text of the Greek New Testament. One of his friends, Martin Dorpius, attempted to persuade him that the Latin did not need to be corrected from the Greek. Dorpius makes the same error in thinking that the “King James Only” people make, arguing: “For is it likely that the whole Catholic Church would have erred for so many centuries, seeing that she has always used and sanctioned this translation? Is it probable that so many holy fathers, so many consummate scholars would have longed to convey a warning to a friend?”  (Campbell 1949, 71) Thomas More joined Erasmus in replying to these arguments, making the point that the importance lies within having an accurate text in the original languages.

In Basel, Switzerland, Erasmus was about to be hassled by the printer Johannes Froben. Froben was alerted that Cardinal Ximenes of Toledo, Spain, had been putting together a Greek and Latin Testament in 1514. However, he was delaying publication until he had the whole Bible completed. The first printed Greek critical text would have set the standard, with the other being all but ignored. Erasmus published his first edition in 1516, while the Complutensian Polyglot (many languages) was not issued until 1522.

The fact that Erasmus was rushed to no end resulted in a Greek text that contained hundreds of typographical errors alone.[8] Textual scholar Scrivener once stated: ‘[It] is in that respect the most faulty book I know,’ (Scrivener 1894, 185) This comment does not even take into consideration the blatant interpolations (insert readings) into the text that were not part of the original. Erasmus was not lost to the typographical errors, which corrected a good many in later editions. This did not include the textual errors. It was his second edition of 1519 that was used by Martin Luther in his German translation and William Tyndale’s English translation. This is exactly what Erasmus wanted, writing the following in that editions preface: “I would have these words translated into all languages. . . . I long for the ploughboy to sing them to himself as he follows his plough.”

Sadly, the continuous reproduction of this debased Greek New Testament, gave rise to it becoming the standard, being called the Textus Receptus (Received Text), taking over 400 years before it was dethroned by the critical Text of B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort in 1881. Regardless of its imperfection, the Erasmus critical edition began the all-important work of textual criticism, which has only brought about a better critical text, as well as more accurate Bible translations.

As was true with many other early Bibles in the early days of the Reformation, it had its detractors. Like the Geneva Bible, but on a much tamer note, Erasmus was critical of the clergy in his notes. For instance, the text of Matthew 16:18, which says, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.” (Douay) Very plainly, he rejects the idea that this text is applied to primacy Peter, and that the pope is a successor of such. Imagine writing such a thing in the very edition you are going to dedicate to the pope! We can certainly see why Erasmus’ works were prohibited, even in the universities.

Erasmus was not only concerned with ascertaining the original words; he was just as concerned with achieving an accurate understanding of those words. In 1519, he penned Principles of True Theology (shortened to The Ratio). Herein he introduces his principles for Bible study, his interpretation rules. Among them is the thought of never taking a quotation out of its context nor out of the line of thought of its author. Erasmus saw the Bible as a whole work by one author, and it should interpret itself.

Erasmus Contrasted With Luther

Erasmus penned a treatise called Familiar Colloquies in 1518, where again he was exposing the corruptions on the Church and the monasteries. Just one year earlier, in 1517, Martin Luther had nailed his 95 theses on the church door at Wittenberg, denouncing the indulgences, the scandal that had rocked numerous countries. Many folks were likely thinking that these two could bring change and reform. This was not going to be a team effort, though, as they both were at opposite ends of the spectrum on how to bring this reform about. Luther would come to condemn Erasmus, because he was viewed as being too moderate, seeking to make change peacefully within the Church. Many have viewed it as Erasmus thinking and writing, while Luther appeared to go beyond that with his actions.

The seemingly small bond they may have shared (by way of their writings against the Church establishment), was torn down the middle in 1524 when Erasmus penned the essay On the Freedom of the Will. Luther believed that salvation results from “justification by faith alone” (Latin, sola fide) and not from priestly absolution or works of penance. In fact, Luther was so adamant on his belief of “justification by faith alone” that in his Bible translation, he added the word “alone” to Romans 3:28. What Luther failed to understand was that Paul was writing about the works of the Mosaic Law. (Romans 3:19, 20, 28) Thus, Luther denied the notion that man possesses a free will. However, Erasmus would not accept such faulty reasoning, in that it would make God unjust because this would suggest that man would be unable to act in such a way as to affect his salvation.

As the Reformation was growing throughout Europe, Erasmus saw complaints from both sides. Many of the religious leaders who supported the reform movement chose to leave the Catholic Church. While they could not predict the result of their decision, they moved forward, many ending in death. This would not be true of Erasmus though, for he withdrew from the debate, yet he did refuse to be made cardinal. His approach was to try to appease both sides. Thus, Rome saw his writings as being that of a heretic, prohibiting them, while the reformers denounced him as refusing to risk his life for the cause. Here was a man, emotionally broken over criticism, but in fear of rocking the boat with Rome, so he cautiously sat on the sideline.

The affairs of Erasmus to the Reformation can be summarized as follows: “He was a reformer until the Reformation became a fearful reality; a jester at the bulwarks of the papacy until they began to give way; a propagator of the Scriptures until men betook themselves to the study and the application of them; depreciating the mere outward forms of religion until they had come to be estimated at their real value; in short, a learned, ingenious, benevolent, amiable, timid, irresolute man, who, bearing the responsibility, resigned to others the glory of rescuing the human mind from the bondage of a thousand years. The distance between his career and that of Luther was therefore continually enlarging, until they at length moved in opposite directions, and met each other with mutual animosity.”— (McClintock and Strong 1894, 278).

The greatest gain from the Reformation is that the common person can now hold God’s Word in his hand. In fact, the Englishperson has over 100 different translations from which to choose. From these 16th-century life and death struggles, in which Erasmus shared, there has materialized dependable and accurate Bible translations. Consequently, the ‘plowboy’ of 98 percent of the world can pick up his Bible, or at least part of it.

The Textus Receptus

The Dark Ages (5th to 15th centuries C.E.), was a time when the Church had the Bible locked up in the Latin language, and scholarship and learning were nearly nonexistent. However, with the birth of the Morning Star of the Reformation, John Wycliffe (1328-1384), and more officially in the 16th-century Reformation, and the invention of the printing press in 1455, the restraints were loosened, and there was a rebirth of interest in the Greek language. Moreover, with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks 1453 C. E., many Greek scholars and their manuscripts were scattered abroad, resulting in a revival of Greek in the Western citadels of learning.

About fifty years later, or at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, Spain, a man of rare capability and honor, invited foremost scholars of his land to his university at Alcala to produce a multiple-language Bible—not for the common people, but for the educated. The outcome would be the Polyglot, named Complutensian corresponding to the Latin of Alcala. This would be a Bible of six large volumes, beautifully bound, containing the Old Testament in four languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin) and the New Testament in two (Greek and Latin). For the Greek New Testament, these scholars had only a few manuscripts available to them, and those of late origin. One may wonder why this was the case when they were supposed to have access to the Vatican library. This Bible was completed in 1514, providing the first printed Greek New Testament, but did not receive approval by the pope to be published until 1520 and was not released to the public until 1522.

Froben, a printer in Basel, Switzerland became aware of the completion of the Complutensian Polyglot Bible and of its pending consent by the pope to be published. Immediately, he saw a prospect of making profits. He at once sent word to the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536), who was the foremost European scholar of the day and whose works he had published in Latin, beseeching him to hurry through a Greek New Testament text. In an attempt to bring the first published Greek text to completion, Erasmus was only able to locate, in July of 1515, a few late cursive manuscripts for collating and preparing his text. It would go to press in October of 1515 and would be completed by March of 1516. In fact, Erasmus was in such a hurried mode he rushed the manuscript containing the Gospels to the printer without first editing it, making such changes, as he felt was necessary on the proof sheets. Because of this great rush job, this work also contained hundreds of typographical errors. Erasmus himself admitted this in its preface that it was “rushed through rather than edited.” Bruce Metzger referred to the Erasmian text as a “debased form of the Greek testament.” (B. M. Metzger 1964, 1968, 1992, 103)

Needless to say, Erasmus was moved to produce an improved text in four succeeding editions of 1519, 1522, 1527, and 1535. Erasmus’ editions of the Greek text, we are informed, ended up being an excellent achievement, a literary sensation. They were inexpensive, and the first two editions totaled 3,300 copies, in comparison to the 600 copies of the large and expensive six-volume Polyglot Bible. In the preface of his first edition, Erasmus stated, “I vehemently dissent from those who would not have private persons read the Holy Scriptures, nor have them translated into the vulgar tongues.” (Baer 2007, 268)

Except for everyday practical consideration, the editions of Erasmus had little to vouch for them, for he had access to five (some say eight) Greek manuscripts of reasonably late origin and none of these were of the whole Greek New Testament. Rather, these comprised one or more sections into which the Greek texts were normally divided: (1) the Gospels; (2) Acts and the general epistles (James through Jude); (3) the letters of Paul; (4) Revelation. In fact, of the 5,750 Greek New Testament manuscripts that we now have, only about fifty are complete.

Consequently, Erasmus had but one copy of Revelation (twelfth-century). Since it was incomplete, he merely retranslated the missing last six verses of the book from the Latin Vulgate back into Greek. He even frequently brought his Greek text in line with the Latin Vulgate; this is why there are some twenty readings in his Greek text not found in any other Greek manuscript.

Martin Luther would use Erasmus’ 1519 edition for his German translation, and William Tyndale would use the 1522 edition for his English translation. Erasmus’ editions were also the foundation for further Greek editions of the New Testament by others. For instance, the four published by Robert Estienne (Stephanus, 1503-59). According to Bruce Metzger, the third of these, published by Stephanus, in 1550, became the Textus Receptus or Received Text of Britain and the basis of the King James Version. This took place through Theodore de Beza (1519-1605), whose work was based on the corrupted third and fourth editions of the Erasmian text. Beza would produce nine editions of the Greek text, four being independent (1565, 1589, 1588-9, 1598), and the other five smaller reprints. It would be two of Beza’s editions, that of 1589 and 1598, which would become the English Received Text.

Beza’s Greek edition of the New Testament did not even differ as much as might be expected from those of Erasmus. Why do I say, as might be expected? Beza was a friend of the Protestant reformer, John Calvin, succeeding him at Geneva, and was also a well-known classical and biblical scholar. In addition, Beza possessed two important Greek manuscripts of the fourth and fifth century, the D and Dp (also known as D2), the former of which contains most of the Gospels and Acts, as well as a fragment of 3 John and the latter containing the Pauline epistles. The Dutch Elzevir editions followed next, which were virtually identical to those of the Erasmian-influenced Beza text. It was in the second of seven of these, published in 1633 that there appeared the statement in the preface (in Latin): “You therefore now have the text accepted by everybody, in which we give nothing changed or corrupted.” On the continent, this edition became the Textus Receptus or the Received Text. It seems that this success was in no small way due to the beauty and useful size of the Elzevir editions.

The Restoration Period

For the next 250-years, up until 1881, textual scholarship was enslaved to the Erasmian-oriented Received Text. As these textual scholars[9] became familiar with older and more accurate manuscripts and observed the flaws in the Received Text, instead of changing the text, they would publish their findings in introductions, margins, and footnotes of their editions. In 1734, J. A. Bengle of Tübingen, Germany, made an apology for again printing the Received Text, doing so only “because he could not publish a text of his own. Neither the publisher nor the public would have stood for it,” he complained. (Robertson 1925, 25)

The first one to break free from this enslavement to the Textus Receptus, in the text itself, was Bible scholar J. J. Griesbach (1745-1812). His principal edition comes to us in three volumes, the first in Halle in 1775-7, the second in Halle and London in 1796-1806, and the third at Leipzig in 1803-7. However, Griesbach did not fully break away from the Textus Receptus. Nevertheless, Griesbach is the real starting point in the development of classifying the manuscripts into families, setting down principles and rules for establishing the original reading, and using symbols to indicate the degree of certainty as to its being the original reading.

Karl Lachmann (1793-1851) was the first one fully to get out from under the influence of the Textus Receptus. He was a professor of ancient classical languages at Berlin University. In 1831, he published his edition of the Greek New Testament without any regard to the Textus Receptus. As Samuel MacAuley Jackson expressed it: Lachmann “was the first to found a text wholly on ancient evidence; and his editions, to which his eminent reputation as a critic gave wide currency, especially in Germany, did much toward breaking down the superstitious reverence for the textus receptus.”  Bruce Metzger too had harsh words for the era of the Textus Receptus as well:

So superstitious has been the reverence accorded the Textus Receptus that in some cases attempts to criticize it or emend it have been regarded as akin to sacrilege. Yet its textual basis is essentially a handful of late and haphazardly collected minuscule manuscripts, and in a dozen passages, its reading is supported by no known Greek witnesses. (B. M. Metzger 1964, 1968, 1992, 106)

Subsequent to Lachmann came Friedrich Constantine von Tischendorf (1815-74), best known for his discovery of the famed fourth-century Codex Sinaiticus Manuscript, the only Greek uncial manuscript containing the complete Greek New Testament. Tischendorf went further than any other textual scholar to edit and made the evidence accessible contained in leading as well as less important uncial manuscripts. Throughout the time, Tischendorf was making his treasured contributions to the field of textual criticism in Germany; one Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (1813-75) in England made other valued contributions. Aside from other things, he was able to establish his concept of “Comparative Criticism.” This establishes that the age of a text, like Vaticanus 1209, may not necessarily be that of its manuscript, which was copied in 350 C.E., as it may be a faithful copy of an earlier text, like the second-century and P75. Both Tischendorf and Tregelles were determined defenders of divine inspiration of the Scriptures, which likely had much to do with the productivity of their labors. If you have an opportunity to read about the lengths that Tischendorf went to in his discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, you will be moved by his steadfastness and love for God’s Word.

The Climax of the Restored Text

The critical text of Westcott and Hort of 1881 has been commended by the leading textual scholars over the last one hundred and forty years, and still, stands as the standard. Numerous additional critical editions of the Greek text came after Westcott and Hort: Richard F. Weymouth (1886), Bernhard Weiss (1894–1900); the British and Foreign Bible Society (1904, 1958), Alexander Souter (1910), Hermann von Soden (1911–1913); and Eberhard Nestle’s Greek text, the Novum Testamentum Graece, published in 1898 by the Württemberg Bible Society, Stuttgart, Germany. The Nestle in twelve editions (1898–1923) to be then taken over by his son, Erwin Nestle (13th–20th editions, 1927–1950), followed by Kurt Aland (21st–25th editions, 1952–1963) and lastly, it was coedited by Kurt Aland and Barbara Aland (26th–27th editions, 1979–1993).

Many of the above scholars gave their entire life to God and the Greek text. Each of these could have an entire book penned about them and their work alone. The amount of work they accomplished before the era of computers is nothing short of astonishing. Rightly, the preceding history should serve to strengthen our faith in the authenticity and general integrity of the Greek New Testament. Unlike Bart D. Ehrman, men like Professor Kenyon have been moved to say that the Greek New Testament has, “come down to us substantially as they were written.” And all this is especially true of the critical scholarship of the almost two hundred years since the days of Karl Lachmann upon which all today can feel certain that what they hold in their hands is a mirror reflection of the Word of God that was penned in twenty-seven books, some two thousand years ago.

  [1] Mystery; Secret: (Gr. mystērion) A sacred divine mystery or secret doctrine that lies with God alone, which is withheld from both the angelic body and humans, until the time he determines that it is to be revealed, and to those to whom he chooses to make it known.–Mark 4:11; Rom. 11:25; 16:25; 1 Cor. 2:1; 4:1; 13:2; 14:2; 15:51; Eph. 1:9; 6:19; Col. 1:26; 2:2; 2 Thess. 2:7; 1 Tim. 3:9; Rev. 17:5.

[2] McGrath, Alister. In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture. New York: Anchor, 2002, p. 250.

[3] The primary difference between the UBS5 and the NA28 is that translators primarily use the latter, while textual scholars primarily use the former.

[4] Bruce Manning Metzger, United Bible Societies, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition a Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th Rev. Ed.) (London; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 35.

[5] IBID, 36

[6] I.e. An ancient weight, approximately two-thirds of a shekel.

[7] http://biblia.com/books/zibbcot02/1Sa14.1-14

[8] In fact, his copy of Revelation being incomplete, Erasmus simply retranslated the missing verses from the Latin Vulgate back into Greek.

[9] Brian Walton (1600-61), Dr. John Fell (1625-86), John Mill 1645-1707), Dr. Edward Wells (1667-1727, Richard Bentley (1662-1742), John Albert Bengel (1687-1752), Johann Jacob Wettstein (1693-1754), Johann Salomo Semler (1725-91), William Bowyer Jr. (1699-1777), Edward Harwood (1729-94), and Isaiah Thomas Jr. (1749-1831)

Exactly why are we making other translations beyond the King James Version of 1611? The King James Version has been the primary translation of the Christian community for 400 years (1611-2011).